The "Celebration of Agates" show in 2012 in Minneapolis offered plenty of opportunities to acquire also fascinating rough rocks for the interested collectors. Aaron Savit from Chicago  offered new agate findings from Peru under the name of "Inca agate". He could make the findings resulting from the cooperation with a village cooperative. Even charming demands and the purchase of a larger amount of rough rocks not led him to a closer point of finding as "Andes, Peru" - because the claim rights are currently not registered and the number of competitors is big.

The agates originate from a basaltic amygdaloite and are reaching a size up to 20 cm diameter. However you will find the finest pieces in a range between 4 cm and 10 cm. Larger pieces often have a center of macro-crystalline quartz and offer no crack-free cut. The cracks are the biggest problem in small nodules too however the collector can be lucky by a second cut or erase by "domepolishing" (spherical grinding) this problem. Sometimes the agates are showing also healed and back-filled cracks.

The colors of the Inca agates are very appealing and are showing a color-range over white, bluish-grey and blue, a delicate yellow to intense reds in orange, cinnabar and vermilion. Also porcelain-like shades can be found here. Stones with clear blue and intesivly reds, providing a strong cold-warm-color- contrast are impressive.

The most interesting structures of the Inca agates are pseudomorphic formations of all sorts ( 10 , 19 , 21 ), pattern-relevant spherulites, plumes andthe “Membrantrümmer-structure”. Just this structure type shows a strong similarity of the Peruvian agates with those from the occurrences of the Saar-Nahe-Senke in Germany.

It is possible to get in contact with Aaron Savit via  azsavit@gmail.com.