This is an utterly fascinating and rare 1.9 oz light smoky quartz from Magnet Cove, Arkansas, 2.25” by 1.6” by 1.25”.This is a wonderful cluster with a flat base. With a loupe, you will see an abundance of teeny-tiny brookite crystals featuring on that base. The quartz is mostly stubby Merlin terminations (aka generator where all six faces come to a common point). Smoky quartz is rare in Arkansas as the radioactive minerals that cause the smoke simply aren’t there in any abundance as they are in Brazil, for instance. In any case, were you to cut one of these little crystals in half lengthwise (and please don’t try this at home … the horror!), you would see banding of the smoke color rather like the banding on the tail of a coon (hence the name coontail). The surfaces of the crystals are rather dull from mineral etching after the quartz was formed, giving a lot of surface detail best studied using a loupe. The zoning is evident in a few with thinner coats. Any way you look at this cluster, this is a rare and mysterious beauty!

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Unique Coontail (Smoky) Quartz with Abundant Brookite