Is it Bornite or Chalcopyrite?

We have been selling “Peacock Ore” at The Fossil Cartel since day one. It’s a very colorful, attractive yet inexpensive stone. When we first bought it, the mineral name for it was Bornite. Over the years, vendors started calling it Chalcopyrite. I was confused! What do we call it? Which one is it?
This September, I was at the Denver Gem & Mineral show when an old colleague finally gave me the low down:
It starts out as chalcopyrite, but an acidic chemical solution oxidizes the chalcopyrite and turns it into bornite! I had always been aware that it is a treated rock, but I had no idea that it changed from one rock into another! It got even more interesting:
Chalcopyrite contains several metal elements. The more precious metal elements in the stone (gold, platinum, silver, etc.,) the more colorful the stone turns out. Each color represents a different metal element. Also, the more metal elements, the longer the stone will retain its color! These are all the various metal elements chalcopyrite contains: cobalt (Co), Nickel (Ni), Manganese (Mn), Zinc (Zn) and Tin (Sn) substitutr for Copper (Cu) and Iron (Fe). Selenium (Se), Iron (Fe) and Arsenic (As) substitute for sulfur (S), and trace amounts of Silver (Ag), Gold (Au), Platinum (Pt), Palladium (Pd), Lead (Pb), Vanadium (V), Chromium (Cr), Indium (In), Aluminum (Al) and Antimony (Sb). Wow! That’s a lot of metal elements in one stone!
The healing energies of bornite provide feelings of joy in the moment, with ‘everything is as it should be’, and allows one to separate the positive from the negative. The properties of chalcopyrite enable the bearer to access wisdom from ancient cultures, remove blockages, treat disorders of the lungs and reduce inflammation.
At the same show, I had a very bizarre experience when I purchased the new batch of bornite! There are several vendors that sell bornite and I found one I had purchased other things from in the past. They were one vendor out of hundreds upon hundreds at the show. I picked out three boxes and took a few moments deciding on the last box. It was a box of very large and pretty bornite pieces. I had never seen such large pieces before. Finally I decided to purchase the box (I’m glad I did – they’re very cool!). The vendor began to write up my invoice. She looked down at the last box, looked back up at me, straight in the eyes and said, “You’re not going to believe this!” “What?!” I said. “Your store’s name is already written on the box!!!” “What? How is that possible?” She was dumbfounded, too. The only explanation she could come up with was that a man from the store called them last January to order the box. They brought it to the Tucson show, but the man never came to pick it up. The only man it could have been would have been my husband and he doesn’t place orders, so I knew that couldn’t be it.
The Universe works in mysterious ways. There might have been a rational explanation, like when we were at the last Tucson show purchasing from them, they switched boxes for something we had purchased after writing our name on the box. Even with a rational explanation, the fact that I picked out that one box out of all the millions of possibilities goes to show you: everything is as it should be — which is the lesson in bornite.

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