BY STEVE VOYNICK

Vanadium and It’s Minerals

Cavansite, or hydrous calcium vanadium oxysilicate, is collected for its vivid-blue, spherical aggregates, often on a white matrix of other zeolite minerals.

(Steve Voynick)

Of the roughly 155 vanadium-bearing minerals, many of them brightly colored, collectors are probably most familiar with vanadinite, mottramite, and cavansite.

With its hexagonal, orange-red prisms, vanadinite, or lead chlorovanadate, is the most collectible. Mottramite, basic lead copper vanadate, is collected for its greenishyellow encrustations and botryoidal structures, and cavansite, hydrous calcium vanadium oxysilicate, for its vivid-blue, spherical aggregates.