Perhaps this should more accurately be named “ajoite included quartz”, but it’s not. Now, originally ajoite was named after a blue mass of color found in rocks in Ajo, Arizona. I’ve lumped these two together because they’re very closely related. Just know… it has NOTHING to do with real authentic opal. You may sometimes see little air bubbles from the synthetic manufacturing process or even scratches on the surface. It’s usually flawless with no inclusions and blue-ish clear or milky colored. This stuff is often mistaken for (and deliberately meant to be passed off as) moonstone because of its luminous blue-ish glow.īut it ain’t nothin’ more than manmade glass ( or sometimes even plastic!) 🙁 Of course, you’d have to own the piece for a bit of time to catch that though. The above quartz is clearly artificially irradiated quartz.Īnd since the pink color of the tourmaline + the black of the quartz is so strong, I’m going to assume that this specimen (and others like it) would be considered “HOT” meaning that it could still be giving off significant amounts of radiation!!Īnother tell-tale sign would be that the color fades over time and very quickly when exposed to sunlight. See the dark six-sided points up there? Yep, that’s quartz and, as you can see, it looks like black quartz, Morion quartz even… BUT ITS NOT! It was coupled with an easily identified irradiated smokey quartz.
Now, it is HARD to pick out the fake pink tourmalines, but this one made it all too easy. Well, let me tell you… because I want you to be informed and be able to catch this shiz too. It so totally does!īUT I can tell these in the below photo are FAKES. The color really pops so it really catches your eye! Not to say that pink tourmaline of this color doesn’t exist in nature. Mostly, I’ve seen these at the most recent Tucson Gem Shows or popping up on eBay from the Middle East. (There are some handy-dandy “SHARE” buttons you can use at the bottom). If you feel passionate about this too, please share this post in any way you prefer. I really want to educate our community on what’s available out there so we can make really informed decisions when adding specimens to our sacred collections.
I’m so honored to be able to serve in this way + grateful for being given the opportunity to do so! I get really super-duper passionate about getting this info out there and I feel I’m in a very unique position to do just that, being a former science department chair, having studied geology at the Masters level, and being a Crystal Energy Teacher with a pretty large platform gives me a great advantage… so how could I NOT heed the call? The artificial mineral market is continuing to grow and it seems there’s a “gap” in good reliable info on this sort of thing in general. I have more “FAKE CRYSTALS” updates for us today.
0 kommentar(er)
