I was looking at eBay again this morning, and you know what that means – another rant. I’ll try to keep it short.
Here goes.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS COLORED OBSIDIAN!!
If you are still thinking, “yes, but there’s the rare blue obsidian,” READ THE ABOVE AGAIN.
Obsidian is always, always, always black. Sometimes it’s [...]
So you may be sitting there thinking to yourself, “if a sucker is born every minute, that’s a lot of suckers. Gee Elf, how can I make a living off them by selling them crystals?” If you are wondering this, (and who isn’t?), read on!
The commonly faked or enhanced stone I talked about previously was turquoise, where one of the main purposes of the chemical treatment is to prevent the stone from changing color as it ages.
For the widely available “peacock ore,” the opposite is true. Peacock ore is actually chalcopyrite, or more rarely, the closely-related mineral bornite, [...]
Just as most commercially available gemstones in jewelry have been “enhanced” (radiation, dyes, etc.) – whether the seller informs you of this or not, which they almost never do – turquoise is no exception. I was reading all about it yesterday, and there is a dizzying array of ways to fake turquoise, depending on [...]
A new visitor (hi!) asked about how to tell the difference between the baked citrine (heat-treated amethyst), and genuine citrine. I’ll post photos as soon as I can, but in the meantime I think I am familiar enough with them now that I can describe it.