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Trademark Names, Part One
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Do Crystals Really Heal?
When is "Rare" not Rare ??
Never need cleaning ??
I can't feel my crystals !?!
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What Hand is best? Dominant??
Everything is Energy

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Buyer's Guide
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Crystal Configurations
Fakes and Forgeries
Old Rock-New Names
Ruby Zoisite is NOT Ruby Fuchsite
Simple Smudge Instructions

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My Hematite Ring Broke!
Online Shopping Tips
Cleaning Dust/Dirt off of Crystals
Simple Full Moon Crystal Cleansing

Fakes, Forgeries and a couple of simple testing methods

There are ways to check for Amber authenticity, the most accurate being the "hot pin" test. You basically heat the end of a needle (make sure to protect your fingers that are holding the needle. It can get quite hot, quite fast, so you don't want to burn yourself). and insert it into an imperceptible place in the amber (a hole of a drilled bead, towards the bottom, etc.). If you smell definite pine-tree resins it means it is real Amber. However, please note that the slight mark of burning remains and cannot be reversed.

If you have a piece of Amber that is without holes, jewelry makings, clasps, etc (in other words a simple piece of amber with no extras), you can try the Salt Water test. Pour salt into water for the "Float" Test. (2.5 tablespoons of salt to every 1 cup of water) I find that using 3 cups of water and 7.5 Tablespoons of salt works very well. After several minutes of stirring the salt will dissolve. Carry out the test and then wash the sample with pure water. Note: This will NOT an accurate test to detect Copal or Polystyrene.

One more note on Amber. I read recently on mindat.org the following post: "At a meeting in my club, a member brought a large polished sample with what he thought was Amber with a pretty large insect in, bought in Tallinn, Estonia in good faith, because he had tried (or was demonstrated, I don’t remember) the hot needle test in the shop. Another member in my club got it to do further investigation, and what he found was that the top of the sample, the polished part with the insect was an epoxy type, but at the bottom it was a layer of real amber, where it wasn’t polished, and where the hot needle test of course was performed."

Mt. St. Helens Obsidian (or Mr. St. Helens Peacock Obsidian)

I had heard of this before and remember seeing some a few years back, but it always felt "Questionable" to me. It recently popped up on Ebay as "RARE" (you know how I feel about that word) and I had to groan.

When I first saw this stuff, I was told it was obsidian with Mt. St. Helen's ash introduced into it. Then, the story was that it was reconstituted glass with Mt. St. Helen's ash introduced into the process. Reconstituted glass is a process where quartz is melted and all the impurities are removed then it is reformed.

A partial description went like this..., "Mt St Helen Obsidian Rough. Fantastic Neon Blue color obsidian which is volcanic glass and is sometimes called Emerald Obsidianite..."

Now, when someone calls something "Obsidianite" instead of Obsidian....that is a red flag. They go on to say that the person making this adds the Neon Blue to Emerald coloring.

Bottom line is that this is man made, not nature made. The fact that they call this "Rare" is offensive. The fact that it is being passed off as natural, is offensive. Someone that would do this has no integrity and are only out to make a buck (or in this case $38.00 bucks per piece).

Update 08-02-2011 Found another...this time selling "Helenite" or Green Mt. St. Helen's Obsidian. Again, this is nothing more than synthetic glass. (I did check and verify my facts through mindat.org's message boards and listings).

For more information, scroll down this page to the entry on Brightly colored Obsidians.

I saw this in a shop the other day and just had to laugh. It is so obviously a fake! This particular specimen is called by many names, most often "Cinnabar Quartz". However, it is NOT the same as the Cherry or Strawberry "Quartz" fakes that are actually glass with color introduced. (See the Brightly colored Obsidian entry below).

This piece, is manufactured also through another process. The quartz is reconstituted. " Reconstituted means that gemstone scraps have been heated until they melt together, sometimes with a plastic binder added, and then molded." After the process is complete, color, in this case Cinnabar, is added to create the wispy pinks and red inclusions. This is a pretty cut and dried fake. There is really nothing else to say :)

Quartz enhanced with Cinnabar for Color

If you work with color therapy, obviously, this could be used. It is interesting to look at. But as a real healing crystal? Absolutely not. Do not be taken advantage of. Be smart, ask questions, be informed.

It has been brought to my attention (Thank you!!) that the shiny "Jet" material I was questioning as fake is actually Anthracite, which is also a variety of coal. It has a shinier finish than Jet and comes from China, France and the US. Other varieties of coal include: Anthracite, Bituminous Coal, Jet, Lignite, Quisqueite, Stipite, and Torbanite.

One of the most common forgeries I have come across is that of misidentified Turquoise. True Turquoise colors include a bright blue, sky-blue, pale green, blue-green, turquoise-blue, apple-green, green-gray. Many may have streaks of pale greenish blue to white. Watch carefully for the wording a vendor uses. For instance “Turquentine” is the name given to Howlite that has been dyed.

In a batch of stones I recently purchased, with Turquoise being one of the pieces listed in the batch, I was dismayed to find that it was not Turquoise at all. Instead, it was dyed Howlite. This was easy to see as the streaks were most decidedly gray to black, not greenish blue to white.

Another more blatant (and disappointing) example was a gem faire I attended last year. I purchased several pendants from a vendor at the show. He correctly identified the pieces as I picked them up until it came to the Turquoise ones. He called it Turquoise due to the pendant being a Turquoise color, but it was most decidedly NOT Turquoise. The color was not even, it had patches of white and silvery/gold. When I pointed this out to him, he changed his mind and said it was a denim Lapis Lazuli. Curious, I purchased one. My fool proof test of this piece would tell me what it REALLY was.

Upon returning home, I wrapped the piece in a towel and tapped it with a hammer. The result of the tapping test can be seen here. Yes, you guessed it!! This is Howlite that has been dyed. You can even see where the dye job has started to bleed in. It looks more like an M & M doesn't’t it with its candy coated outer shell?

Dyed Howlite, NOT Turquoise	Dyed Howlite, NOT Turquoise

It makes me want to take my hammer and towel to a gem faire, wait for a vendor to misidentify a piece and then say, “Oh, really? Wow! Do you mind?” Then take the piece……and WHACK!! Fraud revealed! Of course, I cannot and would not do that. The majority of vendors I use are up front and honest with me, but as with any job, there are those who are in it for the bucks. This is where education is your friend. For instance, if you see a piece in which the color has unnatural splotches or is too evenly distributed and you may suspect it is a fraud, simply ask more questions. Point out the color distribution and point blank ask f it is dyed or enhanced.

As always, just be discerning. Ask a lot of questions. In the end, your intuition will be your guide.

As I was catching up with my reading on Fakes, Forgeries, Stabilized Material etc. at Mindat.org, I found this very simple instruction on how to "test" pieces if you were suspicious as to whether it has been dyed or stabilized (read more on one type of Stabilization process below in the Azurite section).
Please note: Do this at your own risk. Using the underside may be best for most types of testing in this manner. I personally have never had any issues, but just the same....

1. The easiest way to check for dyed material is to use acetone (Fingernail polish remover) and a small piece of white cotton or white toilet paper. Apply the acetone to the cotton or toilet paper, then rub a small spot of the piece in question with the acetone cotton/toilet paper. If the material is dyed, this will likely rub off on to the acetone-soaked material and leave a blue spot. This can also remove some of the stabiliser agents and leave that spot chalky-looking.

2. For stabilised material: Use a lighter flame (On low) and hold it over a small corner edge. All stabilised materials will give off a burnt plastic smell and leave the area that the flame touched generally blistered. I know this sounds extreme but it only takes a moment and if you suspect the item is fake, you are not losing anything. If it IS real Turquoise, this brief exposure will not hurt it.

Azurite/Malachite

In the ever growing world of rocks and minerals, there appears to be a recent rash of questionable pieces with questionable names. Many times, a vendor purchases pieces from their source and the identity of that piece shared. This identity is passed from the vendor who made the original purchase down to his customers.
They in turn, pass it on to those they sell to and on and on it goes. Once a piece is misidentified, that too, passes down the chain of vendor to purchaser, neither being the wiser.

Sometimes, the identification SEEMS to be right, but the piece itself looks a bit too perfect or different than what has been seen in the past. Let me be clear here--This Azurite/Malachite is technically NOT a FAKE OR FORGERY. What it is, however, is not natural. Welcome to the world of Stabilization!

It is important to note, that even though the information provided below shares how stabilized pieces are crafted and created, that the minerals involved are the real deal.

Stabilized Azurite/Malachite Tumbles

Yes, that is lovely blue Azurite with Green Malachite. And while Malachite/Azurite DO occur together naturally, this is not one of those times. Someone came up with a brilliant idea on how to utilize (recycle) the powdered material that was left over after cutting.

Here’s how it works. Azurite is a soft mineral. You can literally scrape a piece and get a little mound of blue powder. (How do you think the Egyptians used Lapis as an eye shadow?). When Azurite is mined, or boxed and shipped or sliced and diced, this blue powder accumulates.

They take all of this beautiful blue powder, add it to a stabilizing solution, mix it up and sprinkle in Malachite shavings. Then they put it into a 350 degree oven….wait, I was starting to sound like Julia Childs there….LOL Anyway, you get the idea.

Once these blocks harden, they can then be sliced into smaller pieces to be tumbled or slabs to be polished, jewelry pieces to be crafted, etc. This production technique can and is used on many other softer materials, like Chrysocolla for example.

And something to note–these pieces are normally NOT dyed. They may however get powder in the micro cracks that occur during tumbling or polishing etc. and may turn your hand a different color if held for too long (heat from the hand loosens up powder in cracks). Washing or soaking will also release these micro powders
so your water may turn a different shade. So if you wash your tumbled Chrysocolla to cleanse it and get some color on your hand, do not panic, it is still Chrysocolla, just with a twist.

Just remember, everything may not always be what it appears to be, or then again, maybe it can. Education is important and this is my intent on sharing this information with you. The world of crystals is a huge one and the more you know, the more you grow.

**ALERT** As I was doing some research on this type of process, I ran across no more than 6 sites that labeled these tumbled Azurite/Malachite pieces as RARE!!. This is not true. They are not rare at all. China manufactures these on a regular basis.

While I believe 100% in the metaphysical aspects of crystals, I am very concerned that those without integrity (who are just in it for the buck) are trying to take advantage of those in the metaphysical community. And there are others, who simply were misled when selling (in other words, the folks they purchased it from told them what it was and they simply passed along the info believing it was true to their buyers and on and on it goes). That is why I think it is imperative that we becomeeducated on what is out there. And this is the reason I will, on occasion, speak to the fakes and forgeries that come across my path.

Herkimer Diamonds GLUED into a "matrix" material

Yes, I have been known to be gullible too. When I first started working in the crystal world, I purchased an entire flat of these “remarkable Herkimer Diamonds in matrix”. I started to get suspicious when all of the Herkimer’s started to fall out while simply holding the piece. What I found out was, while the Herkimer’s were real enough, the “matrix” was not. The Herkimer’s had in fact been inserted and glued into said fake matrix.

As is my habit, I went to some geological/rock hound experts and got the real scoop.

“It is almost impossible to extract Herkimers intact in groups. They grow in cavities into threads of individual crystals which have no cohesiveness with adjoining crystals. The groups fall apart when the cavities are opened or simply subjected to shock of any kind. These groups are sometimes reconstructed using glue. Everyone who knows Herks knows this and these have been acceptably sold as such. This practice of gluing Herks has a long, long history.” Information provided by Chester S. Lemanski Jr.

Brightly colored Obsidian

In my quest to share information, I always take into consideration the geological make up as well as the metaphysical one. For the last few years, there has been an influx of Chinese minerals into the metaphysical and geological communities that needs to be addressed. As with all things, take what resonates for you and leave the rest.

Many of the pieces coming out of China can be one of three things:

They may be mined in China, like many of the Fluorites are.

They may be polished or tumbled in China due to the cheap labor in which to do so.

Or, they may be MANUFACTURED in China.

A recent “new find” has cropped up in the past couple of years which is taking especially the metaphysical community by storm. It truly is dishonest in my book, but, again,that is in "The Rebel Rocker's World" and may not be so in yours.

New! Rare! Red Obsidian! (or bright green or cobalt blue or clear purple) is nothing but art glass with some color introduced. This is very good marketing…..as Obsidian IS actually a type of glass. Silica/Sand is also made into glass, so no one is really NOT telling the truth–but they sure are stretching it. This artificial Red Obsidian is nothing more, truly, than art glass with possibly some hematite or iron powder thrown in for beautiful color.

Art Glass with color introduced

I believe that if I am going to present information to others, I should tell the truth, even when it may not be the popular thing to do. And now I also incorporate geological studies into my metaphysical ones. Now that I am a bit older and more experienced in spotting these manufactured pieces, it never ceases to amaze me how many people are selling them as the real deal. Not only are they selling them as real, they are asking outrageous prices for these fakes and forgeries. And people purchase them, only because they do not know any better, or trust the seller to be telling the truth.

Now, I do realize that I am only responsible for what I sell. I cannot change how others live in their own worlds. But I do believe that at the very least, you should have the information to use (or not use) as you see fit. So this is why I am sharing with you today.

There are tons more out there that have the same story. My advice to you is to ask many questions. Get a second opinion if you like. I think it is important that if you are going to invest in any piece, that you be assured and know from your heart that it is real.

Do you have a story like this? I would love for you to share your experiences in purchasing some of your minerals and crystals that you may feel are questionable.