Pegmatite is a kind of rock that most people never hear about as they go about their daily business, but as soon as you become a mineral collector, it’s the one type of rock you’ll talk about the most. Like granite, pegmatite is an igneous rock and is made up of pieces of several minerals, usually including feldspar, quartz, and mica, along with others. In granite, those pieces are mostly small and look like little flecks, but in pegmatite, the pieces are larger, making it look a bit like granite that’s been magnified—sometimes by a lot! Along with having bigger pieces of minerals, pegmatite is more likely to contain valuable minerals and gemstones. Most pegmatite is likely to include schorl and garnet, but it can also include elbaite (colored tourmaline), beryl (aquamarine or heliodor), apatite, topaz, lepidolite—you get the idea. If a pegmatite is basically like magnified granite with maybe some schorl and garnet, and that’s it, it’s called a simple pegmatite. If it has enough “mineralization” to have allowed more valuable minerals to form in it, it’s called a complex pegmatite. One useful thing to know if you’re talking to an experienced collector is that two different things are called “pegmatite”: the rock type and a deposit of that type of rock. You might hear them say something like “That pegmatite has to be about 30 feet long and 2 feet wide.” In that case, they’re talking about a deposit of pegmatite rock that’s between some other kind of rock or rocks. And they can also refer to several “pegmatites” (pegmatite deposits) in one area.