Zircon and Diopside    York River Skarn Zone, near Bancroft, Ontario, Canada.  Ex. Jay Walter collection.  Collected by Jay and Michael Walter, 1992.  This cluster of three doubly-terminated zircons measures 3.1 x 2.5 x 1.2 cm.  The crystals are growing in roughly the same direction on this rather flat specimen and are partially encrusted with green diopside.  They are translucent, transparent in small areas, and very lustrous.  There form is also very nice but difficult to make out in the photos.  One has a visible open crack but the crystal is very stable.  The color ranges from clear, to white, to purple.  The front of the piece is damage-free.  The back shows contact or breakage from matrix. 
These are from a small find of this material which produced about a dozen specimens (they were all etched out of calcite) ten of which were thumbnail sized specimens. It may not look like much in the images but it is, to my knowledge,one of the finest zircons found at this now closed locality.  $450