WPOR-02/8 - Apatite and quartz on albite

Portugal II Quarry, Malpartida, near Almeida (Guarda District, Portugal)

Piece of pegmatite made of white albite, creamy microcline and greyish quartz. There is a vuggy area with crystallized albite on which several 2-mm. lustrous colorless transparent complex hexagonal apatite crystals rest. They are fluorescent in a salmon-pink color. Associated minerals are a lonely 0.4-cm. long smoky quartz crystal and tiny muscovite crystals.

4.5x4x3 - 9 €

WPOR-02/25 - Apatite, quartz and albite

Portugal II Quarry, Malpartida, near Almeida (Guarda District, Portugal)

Large piece of pegmatite with a large crystal of creamy microcline (showing a twin plane at bottom) as a central core followed by a layer of white albite at the bottom half. Albite forms white bladed crystals to about 1 cm. across some of which are epitaxially intergrown with creamy microcline. Most of the specimen is then covered by dark smoky quartz crystals to about 3.5 cm. long, many of them naturally broken and showing an opaque white core with a rim of translucent almost black color. Large areas of the specimen are coated by a mixture of greenish clay and fine-grained muscovite. There are numerous lustrous colorless transparent crystals of apatite to 0.6 cm. across. A few have an interesting orange nucleus that quite probably is small included spessartine crystals. Apatite crystals are fluorescent in a salmon-pink color. The microcline crystal is broken and recrystallized at both ends, the specimen may be considered a floater. Some damage mostly in the quartz crystals but still an interesting pegmatitic specimen.

9.5x9x7 - 80 €