Reptiles Leopard Geckos

What weighs 6.2 tons and is worth more then 3.1 billion dollars? Are your guessing a new high tech battleship or maybe a new stealth fighter? Well it's a big ball of glow in the dark fluorite.

Yemengzhus, also known as Legendary Luminous Pearls in China, are balls of a rare glow in the dark fluorite.

It is very rare in the mineral kingdom for a specimen of Fluorite to glow in the dark without the aid of an Ultra Violet light. So rare in fact the western geology textbooks still do not recognize this species of fluorite.

This new deposit was first reported in the Chinese press in November 1982. Workers at the Guangdong Provincial Geological Metallurgical and Geological Exploration Company found a deposit of Yemengzhu Fluorite in a Tungsten mine in Guangdong China. The company ground the deposit into a round sphere ( Pearl) and had the Chinese government put an appraisal value on it. In 1983 the Chinese government made public an appraisal valuing this Yemengzhu at 900 million dollars.

What I found interesting about this appraisal report is that the government clearly states their reasons and methods for arriving at the $900,000.000 price tag. They compared the pearl to the very best grade of diamonds. This appraisal can be found on the internet.

Since the first Yemengzhu came to the public eye in 1982 there have been several more pearls made, each one larger then the last and with an even bigger price tag. Here are two well documented cases.

January 15, 2002, the world's largest Yemengzhu was put on display in Shenzhen its weight was 14.35 kilograms and had a diameter of 21 cm. This pearl was valued at 1.2 billion U.S. dollars.

Oct. 2007: A new world record holder is put on display in Shanghai. Certified by The World Guinness headquarters. The weight of the Yemengzhu is 6.1 tons and is valued at 3.1 billion U.S. dollars For a rock???

I have found documentation on other smaller pearls coming on the market since 1982. They range from the size of an egg to basketball size. The prices are all over the scale from $64,000 up to $108,000,000.

What makes a six ton rock worth more then a small country? There is actually a lot of debate about that in China right now. National pride and traditions are driving the markets. Every kid in China knows the story of The Legendary Luminous Pearl. It is believed that touching a pearl will bring you great prosperity and good luck The belief has spawned a whole multi million dollar industry making and selling man made Yemengzhus for the home.

There's documentation on the web telling of all the millions that have been made and lost from Yemengzhus. My favorite is one about a Chinese's Supermarket owner who borrowed 70 million dollars from his stock holders to buy a Yemengzhu to display in his chain of stores. When the company went bankrupt they sold the pearl for only 5 million dollars because the market is now cooling off. The owner is no where to be found by the press.

I hope you find this story as fascinating as I do, I am still looking for more documentation on the internet and hope to write a book about why a stone ball is worth $3.2 billion dollars.

You can check out pictures of the Yemengzhus in this story on my website http://www.catnews.org

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