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Wonderful patterning and mixed hues, strong phosphorescence from Puttapa Mine, Australia.
Puttapa has been picked over with a fine-tooth comb. There have been several trips to the mine to extract every little scrap left, first-run pieces have sold (except for these) and much of the minor leftover material has been wholesaled out to numerous sellers. We were one of the three original sellers of this material and still have much of our original stock (we are the only ones actually revenue sharing with Graham Fraser, a good friend).
The only minerals we are pretty confident of are the willemite and calcite - there may be much more. The white mineral has been assayed to be willemite with a very high zinc content.
Special note: The phosphorescent pic was taken with zero lights - glows like a banshee. (Our rule of thumb on these pieces is that anything that phosphoresces is willemite, aragonite being the possible exception).
They were nicknamed "Yooperlites" which is derived from the name “yooper”. A yooper is a nickname for the Upper Peninsula natives and these fluorescent stones quickly gained fame. After data was published on these fluorescent stones, it was discovered that sodalite is the actual true mineral that is fluorescing orange.
365nm UV light is often called "blacklight". Before the advent of longwave UV LEDs, blacklight fluorescent tubes, (the kinds used in hippie days to light up psychedelic posters) were the standard longwave UV light for our hobby. They were not very powerful but they did light a large area.
Enter 365nm UV LEDs
First, an animation showing the difference between the UV flashlight we recommend (365nm filtered UV flashlight) versus unfiltered 395nm UV flashlights we see many folks carrying around at shows. So. much. visible purple light. We selected a bunch of rocks as a demonstration. Took pictures of them under his flashlight without the filter and then with the filter.
