Pink Fire Quartz has tiny oriented inclusions of covellite crystals, a rare copper sulfide (CuS). It was first shown at the Tucson Gem Show in 2005. This quartz has a superb purple schiller effect due to tiny hexagonal inclusions of covellite. The inclusions grow all parallel to one another and it turned out that they are micron-thick covelline crystals, up to about 1 mm in diameter. Pink Fire is possibly the rarest and more exciting between the quartz gemstones. The amazing pink shine is visible just from few angles because the covellite crystals are iso-oriented in a epitactic growth over a phantom face of the quartz crystal. The phenomenon is similar to the shiller effect of sunstone, but has been proposed as a new optical effect. The material reputedly comes from vicinity of Ibatiba in Espirito Santo State in Brazil, and except of covellite it contains also red strongly elongated hematite crystals (“beetle-legs”). There is some secret about the exact deposit that lies in a private land and is extracted and cut in limited amount only by the land owner.
