Odd chunk of quartz.

[Blacksheep]

From my fathers rock garden, we may have picked this up when we were kids on a family trip out west. It has a distinct black/copper, shiny "crust" that looks like it melted. The quartz is a bit darker under the "crust" that goes to a milky white.

Just curious if this is common as I have never seen another like it, this piece is about the size of an average mans fist. Appreciate any thoughts.

(apologies for the pics, best I could get. It looks almost like a mottled gold/brown/copper/black colored pyrite coating that the camera cannot capture but is crystalline, magnet does not stick)

 

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[Blacksheep]

I don't believe this piece was intentionally broken, as I mentioned we may have picked this up out west in the early 70's. We filled the rock garden starting in 1969 when the house was built and added stones/rocks we thought were interesting in some way and continue to add to this day.

There is a smaller piece in the garden someplace that I believe broke off of this piece when we removed all the rocks for cleaning (a huge job after 40 years) this past weekend. There is a little bit of everything in there, Mica/sandstone/petrified wood etc, even a cement bullfrog that belonged to my grandfather.

I "discovered" this piece when i was hosing off all the accumulated dust and junk, it just stood out from the rest and asked my dad if I could have it for a paper-weight. I do appreciate your response and may consider your offer as this is a really neat piece.

(We cleaned this out and added the free-standing fountain, my dad is an architect and designed his home based on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.)

 

[Eu_citzen]

On pic nr 3 it resembles Granite a bit, however the blurryness and/or the light makes it hard to tell..
Syenite would also be possible if there where no quartz.. But there is.

Schist is a metamorphic rock, which can consist of a number of things.
Common for all shists is that they have a "layered" structure of fine mineral grains.

The word you may be looking for is Scarn?
In ancient time it described none ore bearing rock, a wide and general term..
Contains mostly (today's classification): Amphibole, Epidote, Calcite, wollastonite, pyroxene, garnet... to name most of them.