Sphalerite

This beautiful Sphalerite has a medium yellow hue with golden-orange highlights, and when you view it under halogen lighting or in sunlight, you can see the bright shimmering splitting of white light into its constituent colors in prisms and rainbows inside the stone due to the good cutting along with the excellent dispersion of the material. The stone is only very very slightly included, which is important for Sphalerite as not only is it a transparent sulfide, which is rare enough, but inclusions are almost always present. The finest gems from Spain are among the cleanest and brightest Sphalerite stones extant. The cut on the stone is called a "Modified Brilliant Rectangle".

Sphalerite is beloved by collectors due to the fact that it has some of the highest dispersion among all non-precious gems. Gem Sphalerite has a refractive index of 2.37 which is just below Diamond and allows for brilliant refraction of light in well-cut stones, creating small rainbow-like interior reflections.

Item #SPHALSP061