*from Coronel Murta, Minas Gerais, Brazil. *18 x 14 x 10 mm
My hunt for tourmaline scepters in Brazil. It was my first time going to Brazil. We weren’t going to any of the tourist attractions. We had a guide to take us out into the boonies for minerals. We started in Ouro Preto and all the shops. But none of the shops had any tourmaline scepters. Every place we went, I asked about scepters. We heard replies like “I’ve heard of those”, “my brother saw one once”, and “I held one once”.
Then on day 12, we were in a dealers showroom and I saw one. About ½” long and broken on both ends. I said to Maritta (my wife) “I finally found one”! The proprietor of the shop had been pretending to not speak English. When I showed interest in the scepter he stood up and asked, in perfect English, “You want a scepter”? He then proceeded to pull out a tray of 64 scepters of varying sizes. I picked out a few and then he explained, I must buy the entire tray. My hopes of owning a few were completely crushed. He wanted the same price for all of them as a new truck. After thinking about it overnight, and with my wife's encouragement, we went back the next day and acquired them. I didn’t need a new truck at the moment. The proprietor explained he was also the mine owner and these 64 scepters were the best that had been found in the past 5 years of production.
