At the Tucson show one year a friend and I purchased a couple of small specimens of hsianghualite. It was fluorescent a beautiful saturated red - almost like tugtupite. The mine was given as the Xinghualing Mine in Hunan. After a few attempts I finally made contact with a mineral collector over there who was interested in learning about fluorescent minerals and willing to travel. I taught him how to prospect with a UV light (even sent him one), told him where to go and what to look for - even funded his explorations (we explored many places in China). I sent him to prospect for some of this material from the Xinghualing mine. He found a few pieces and sent them over to me, I promptly began marketing them as hsianghualite. As time went on we grew suspicious. I sent some pieces out for IDs and G. Waychunas finally confirmed what we suspected - it was eucryptite. I offered everyone who had purchased it as hsianghualite a refund but nobody took me up on it. The combination of bright eucryptite and scheelite was just too beautiful to send back. I got a few more shipments, then sadly, things didn’t work out and I lost my contact.
These pieces have wonderfully bright red eucryptite (at first thought to be Hsiianghualite) along with bright blue scheelite. Eucryptite is fluorescent a vibrant red under shortwave UV - slightly darker hue when compared to tugtupite.
