I try not to go overboard showing every decent specimen or stone gem piece of jewelry I make no one likes a show off but I do really get excited to show you guys stuff when it’s what I think to be unique or bare minimum worth sharing so here she is
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That is a beautiful Specimen! It looks like Ruby in Zoisite to me. As has been said hundreds of times, you can’t get a definitive answer just from a picture, but it’s a place to start and see if further testing proves it out.
agreed, nothing like inspecting it in person and testing to ID anything. Pictures can give you a guess to what it is but still a guess, even if an educated one…I does look like ruby in zoisite. testing will be difficult since this is a rock and not a monomineralic rock. The rubies can be tested with scratch as can be zoisite. whole rock specific gravity won’t help, as it’s a mixed mineral rock. Individual parts of the rock, ruby and the zoisite host have to be tested separately.
Yes, and it looks like there is a fairly large area of ruby to test, unless you don’t want to scratch it up! It is just too beautiful to mar it unless you really have to know.
scratch it with something softer like quartz… shouldn’t scratch the ruby.
Place a long wave UV light on it and see how beautiful it is under fluorescent light. Both Ruby and spinel fluoresce. With the purple color showing, l agree, probably ruby in zoisite.
John,
That is a really awesome specimen!
Could it be a conglomerate of Muscovite/Fluorite or Mica/Amethyst? I’m leaning towards the Muscovite/Fluorite, though. Does not look like Ruby/Zoisite to me.
It is difficult to see some of the host matrix, but what I can see looks like thin strata displaying fluidic growth features around the purple crystal deposit. Indicates hydrothermal activity?
Very curious, now! 
Cheers!
Okay guys so when I first bought it it was in a rush I assume the same thing it was most likely Ruby inside of zoisite but I was skeptic of that guess 2 seconds after I seen it the biggest reason was the transparency of the assumed Ruby was so high so I had my wife run to the car and grab some of my lights of course first thing I did was UV it the result was basically inert compared to what I had expected to see from Ruby of this quality and transparency where I did notice as well was using my 6 in one 29$ universal gem light off of Amazon definitely seemed to have more than anything I was expecting during the white to yellow light switch so I purchased it got it home looked at it closer very hard to make out a distinct crystal structure on the purple so I looked it over for 2 minutes then assumed it was possibly a Kimberly with large Garnett’s. So I packed your way safely for a week put it back out it was super dark the purple crystals were almost black they were locked in a padded pelican case where no like to get in as soon as I brought it out of the box I had outside light coming in through my curtains but not direct I watched it fade from a dark dark almost black back to you the purpose color you see now took it about 30 seconds. The host schist did not look like any zoisite I have. And kudos Troy for noticing that one also it’s the color of bran new tin as well as a super low melting point I was using my adjustable gem light I think it’s called a gym eight has a little knob I use it for checking rough they’re about a hundred bucks or 80 I believe there’s a newer model anyways to get super bright and warm. And I know I’m going to get a bunch of grief about testing and testing yes I have all the equipment to test except I’ve not been able to find my specstroscope so are you order a new one no big deal, I have a refractometer kind of big for specific gravity but I have the ability to do that too but my gem microscope is normally all I need. That’s right the hard ones are the rare ones because it’s hard to find something to compare them to I’ve been reading a couple things on some of the stuff I have noticed characteristic wise I’m starting to lean towards gallium in the shift I know I love you crazy but my house is full of rocks and I pay a lot of money for them I think that probably definition crazy anyways a lot of people call me stupid bring to my attention rocks are freeI always reply so is Crystal but why did drug addicts always want my change
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