It's a translucent stone. Norton recently started calling it's "Hard" stones "Hard Translucent" stones, but aside from the name change, everything else is the same. This stone is an HB-8 and is marked as "Hard", so I think it's older and the guy just had it lying around for a while. If it were manufactured today it would be marked "hard Translucent" One of the pics on the ad shows a light shining into the stone and it does indeed exhibit translucency. Norton sells their softer stones with the designation of "soft", and that includes stones that other manufacturers would call "hard". Translucent stones can have some color, and every reliable source I have read says that this is not an indicator of the stones hardness, instead this is determined by specific gravity of the stone.

I'm planning on using this one for knives mainly, but at some point I may try it on some razors. I'm expecting it to be a very fine stone and I'll see how it works.

Michael