A shadow swept across the glowing surface of the largest chunk. Elias froze. It wasn't a shadow from inside the lab. It was part of the recording. A massive shape, jagged and wrong, passed between the ore and the star that had birthed it.

: Situated approximately 3 miles south of Mud Springs (now known as El Dorado) in El Dorado County, California .

Because it is a sulfosalt (soft and brittle), it is rarely faceted. Value is entirely based on the . A PDF guide to collector grading will assign an "S-Factor" (Starlight Factor) from 1 (dull) to 10 (blinding).

The mineral is typically blackish-grey with a brilliant metallic luster and a soft, thin-plated (lamellar) structure.

As of 2025, the Romanian government has declared the abandoned Săcărâmb mines a protected geosite. No new mining is permitted. Consequently, the existing specimens locked in museums (Harvard, London, Vienna) will never be replicated.

The original mines in Romania (Transylvania) were heavily damaged during World War I and World War II. Many geological surveys were lost or destroyed. The only remaining records exist as scanned PDFs uploaded by university libraries or private collectors.

The market is flooded with fake specimens. Unscrupulous sellers often coat galena or mica with metallic dyes to mimic the "starlight" flash. Serious buyers look for PDFs containing microphotographs and X-ray diffraction (XRD) data to compare against potential purchases.