Well, I found my Okenite! I attending the Dallas Fine Mineral show held at The Embassy Suites Hotel last year and one dealer from India had a few pieces in a trunk he hadn’t unpacked. I purchased two puff balls for $15 total. Pretty inexpensive way to satisfy an obsession, I thought. The show was outstanding with many cases of museum quality specimens provided by international sellers. My favorite was a natural-state silver piece (of course!).
The dealer got the rock out of his box and unwrapped the cotton packing material. He then plopped the little fur ball onto my out-stretched palm. As I was examining the fine crystal “fur” a group of kids came into the room. They immediately gravitated to where I was sitting and wanted to pet the rock. “Oooooh sorry! You may look all you like, but this rock is not for touching” The look they gave made me feel like I was the rock police, whose only goal was to suck the joy out of children’s lives.
In fact, I didn’t even feel comfortable picking it up off my hand and setting it back into its cotton nest. The little hairs are more durable than I assumed, but not by much. Below is the other rock I purchased which is still attached to its matrix rock.
I got a little silly during the photo shoot and placed a little model train man on the Okenite in order to distort the scale. In reality, the rock is only an inch in diameter.
