31.5ct Moldavite Czeck Republic Meteorite Impact 28x24x10mm hotsell #42

This is lovely chunk of Moldavite. It has great shape, fantastic texture, and amazing color.

At $18/gram, this is a great deal.

While the origins of the Earth's stones and minerals are all very interesting, Moldavite's origin is one of the most peculiar and mysterious. It is often referred to as a crystal, but it is not. Moldavite is a mossy-green vitreous silica rock, or glass. Crystals can form in several ways but most generally form slowly over time, sometimes over millions of years, and are characterized by highly ordered microscopic structures, or lattices. Moldavite is glass, which is an amorphous solid, and does not have a crystalline structure.

It is believed that Moldavite was formed in an explosive moment of unimaginable heat and energy about fifteen million years ago when an extraterrestrial object, or meteor, stuck the Earth in the area known today as Southern Germany. The meteor, traveling at thousands of meters per second,broke into two pieces and as they slammed into the Earth they formed, for one, the Nördlinger Ries Crater. It was thought for a longtime that the Steinem Crater was the other impact site, but evidence now indicates that they may not have been formed at the same time. As the pieces of meteorite entered the Earth's atmosphere, their velocities caused the Earth's atmosphere to compress in front of them and form a super-heated cushion of air that melted and vaporized the Earth's surface. In that briefest of moments before the impacts, the liquefied and vaporized material fused into the molten substance that would soon, upon cooling, become Moldavite. The impact explosions threw the material into the upper atmosphere and across hundreds of miles.There, spread widely across the land, the Moldavite lay for millions of years until it was discovered by people.

Moldavite is rare, valuable, and some people believe that it has powerful metaphysical properties. Tektites are often dark and opaque, but like Libyan Desert Glass, Moldavite is translucent. Its beautiful green color is unique among tektites and is the primary reason it is so highly sought after. Moldavite's ever-increasing value has, unfortunately, spurred the production of fake Moldavite. There is no such thing hotsell as red, yellow, or purple Moldavite, and if the ‘Moldavite' looks like melted down green bottles, it probably is. China is the leading producer of fake ‘Moldavite'. Moldavite is most commonly found in the Bohemian and Moravian regions of the Czech Republic. Some has also been found in Germany and Austria. Due to the way Moldavite was formed however, genuine Moldavite can fairly easily be distinguished from fake Moldavite. Real Moldavite contains trapped gas bubbles and flow structures that are visible under a microscope,but generally visible to the unaided eye as well. The gas bubbles are sometimes round, but more often they are elongated and stretched because of the stress under which the glass cooled.

Moldavite mining is coming to an end. The area of the Czech Republic where Moldavite has been mined for many years is being turned into a national park. The inability to access more Moldavite will cause its value to increase to even higher levels.