Dodecahedral Pyrite

Intense lapis blue with shiny pyrite details.

Pyrite (FeS2, iron (II) disulfide) is the most abundant sulfide mineral in the world. It is found literally everywhere, in igneous rocks, metamorphic rocks and in sedimentary rocks. It usually forms cubic crystals, with each crystal having six planes and razor-sharp corners and has a somewhat pale, coppery-yellow metallic luster. The ancient Greeks used pyrite to make fire. If you hit a piece of pyrite with a hard object, sparks will fly. Hence the name, πυρίτης (pyritēs) which means "for fire". For this reason the mineral was also popular for a while in the 16th and 17th centuries. Placing a piece of pyrite against a round file gave you just enough spark to fire a pistol of that era. Although pyrite is still primarily mined to make sulfuric acid, there have been more applications lately. For example, pyrite is found in Lithium batteries and the mineral is also increasingly used in solar panels. In the 1840'smMany of the inexperienced fortune hunters...

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151 kg. Labradorite is named after the Canadian peninsula of Labrador where the rock was first found and described. It is a plagioclase feldspar that rarely if ever forms crystals a...

Labradorite is named after the Canadian peninsula of Labrador where the rock was first found and described. It is a plagioclase feldspar that rarely if ever forms crystals and if cr...