Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Copper-Bearing Tourmaline

Tourmaline colored by copper, producing the famous vivid neon blues, greens and teals known commercially as Paraiba-type gems.

A copper-iron sulfide ore famous for its iridescent peacock-like purple and blue tarnish; often sold as treated chalcopyrite.

A rare, intensely blue chalcedony colored by copper-rich chrysocolla, prized as the most valuable of the blue chalcedonies.

An intermediate plagioclase feldspar spanning andesine and labradorite, marketed as a red-to-green gem, much of which is copper-diffusion treated.

An intensely glowing copper-bearing tourmaline famed for its electric neon blue-green color and extreme rarity and value.

An intensely glowing copper-bearing tourmaline whose electric neon-blue color makes it one of the most valuable gems in the world.

A vivid copper-bearing Mexican stone of red cuprite and green chrysocolla that evokes a desert sunset.

A copper-bearing labradorite feldspar from Oregon, famous for its range of natural colors and glittery aventurescent copper schiller.

Tourmaline in blue tones, encompassing iron-colored indicolite and the rare neon copper-bearing Paraiba, among the scarcer tourmaline colors.

An intensely glowing green tourmaline, often copper-bearing, whose electric, almost luminous color recalls paraiba tourmaline.