While in a village about 30 km outside of Antsirabe, I had the good fortune of coming into contact with a miner/dealer who specialized in the local quartz, and had an amazing eye for unusual pieces. This area produces literally tones of quartz— so much so, that every week there are Chinese buyers loading burlap sacks full of crystals into pickup trucks. This group of specimens represents a number of careful selections from several months of production, by someone who was constantly at the mining sites and in the local market seeing specimens as they were produced.