Haystack Butte Jellybean Jasper Slab — PP-00002

A hand-collected jellybean jasper slab from Haystack Butte in the Owyhee high desert of southeast Oregon. I prospected this piece myself, hauled it home, and slabbed it on my own lapidary equipment. First two images submerged in water. Remaining images desk-dry.

About this piece

Jellybean jasper is a brecciated jasper made up of rounded, bean-shaped jasper clasts in a chalcedony matrix — the "jellybeans" are individual jasper pebbles in red, yellow, orange, and brown that got cemented together and silicified into a single stone over geologic time. This slab shows the jellybean structure clearly across both faces, with a strong color range of deep red, vivid yellow, orange, plum, and grayish-blue zones.

One of the standout features of this piece is its translucency. Hold it up to a light and the chalcedony matrix between the jasper beans passes light cleanly, while the denser jasper clasts stay opaque — a backlit effect that not every jellybean slab shows, and a real selling point for cabbers who want to feature it in pendants or wearable work.

Specifications

·Material: Jellybean jasper

·Locality: Haystack Butte, Malheur County, Oregon

·Dimensions: 4" × 2.5" × 5/16" (≈ 102 × 64 × 8 mm)

·Weight: 3.717 oz (≈ 105 g)

·Form: Rough-cut slab, natural edges preserved

·Finish: Sawn faces, unpolished

For cabbers

A solid 5/16" thick — good working thickness for standard cab doming. Plenty of material here for multiple cabs cut to feature different bean clusters, or a single larger cab that captures the full color range. Jellybean jasper takes a beautiful polish and the color zones hold up well at the lap. Standard stability practices apply — inspect any visible fractures with a loupe and stabilize before cutting if needed.

About Plume & Prospect

Plume & Prospect is a one-person operation run by a working prospector in southwest Idaho. I'm a prospector first — chasing gold, minerals, and rough across the Owyhee high desert — and I rockhound everything beautiful I come across along the way. Every single piece in this shop is a specimen I personally gathered in the field, then brought home and worked by hand on my own lapidary equipment. I'm not a reseller. I don't import rough from overseas, I don't buy at shows and flip it, and I don't sell anything I didn't pull out of the ground myself. If it's in the shop, I prospected it, I cut it, and I can tell you exactly where it came from.