Fakes and Forgeries

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.

In 2015, I was asked about Anchi crystals. I had never heard of them, so decided to check it out. They are technically not a fake nor a forgery. I am putting this under the category of Fairy Tale. And I will say, after reading the website and its claims? I am calling this a case of serious hokum (my opinion).

Their generalities on what the crystal is, along with a huge list of claims, just makes me shudder. They state that these pieces are found in only one place in the world. But, attempting to keep an open mind, I decided to email the owner of the website and ask about these claims. I requested a geological testing report to confirm exactly what were in these crystals. Her response was, sadly, exactly what I expected.

Kristi, We do not make available this information to the public. Thank you for your interest. Regards, Laurel Conrard

Andara Crystals are not crystals at all. They are a type of slag glass (from glass factories). They originally were found in an abandoned garbage dump in California. Recently some was found near old volcanic activity. Glass is not now, nor will it ever be a crystal. After reading the pages and pages of claims, I will stick with my initial gut reaction/intuition which is, while it is glass, which may have its own energy signature (everything is energy), I question the validity of the claims made on its “powers”.  It is my opinion that this whole Andara thing is hokum. Yup, I said it, HOKUM! Just another something to part you from your money.

Malachite and Azurite do often occur together naturally, but 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 am starting to sound like Julia Child there….LOL

Bismuth is in the Elemental Class/arsenic Group. It is rarely found in nature in its elemental form.

However, finding laboratory grown specimens is common place. They are much more colorful than the real stuff and the pseudocubic “hopper” crystals are fun to look at (but rarely occur in true Bismuth).

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but you have to admit, the fake/lab grown pieces are much more interesting to look at!

From TheVug.com, “This spikey, irridescent material is not natural. Most specimens are man-made silicon carbide, manufactured for use as an abrasive, or when gemmy, as a diamond simulant. It occurs naturally in meteorites, where it is called moissanite. The localities for these “specimens” may be Mexico, Schenectady (New York) or others. Do not confuse carborundum with corundum (aluminum oxide) or its colored varieties ruby and sapphire. Man-made carborundum has a distinctly spikey appearance.”

Chalcanthite is natural, water-soluble copper sulphate. A secondary mineral that is formed in arid climates or in rapidly oxidizing copper deposits. It is usually of post-mining formation, forming on mine walls and by the action of acidic surface waters on copper veins.

CAUTION: Many, usually well-crystallised chalcanthite specimens offered for sale (e.g. on-line auctions), are artificially grown WITHOUT full disclosure of this fact.

Picture credit http://dannytherockman.com/lab-grown-crystals/chalcanthite/cat_369.htm

Charoite was discovered (1978) in the Murun Mountains in Yakutia, Russia. It is a rare mineral, becoming even more scarce with each passing year. Charoite colors range from a pale lavender to a deep, beautiful violet color with the shimmery, almost velvety, swirling patterns. Also included may be pockets of black Augite, orange Tinaksite or transparent/clear feldspar crystals.

What you see here is decidedly NOT Charoite, but it is being marketed as such. In fact, this purple, white, orange and black combo specimen from China is a mixture of fluorite, quartz and iron, D grade material at best. Charoite is not present in this piece at all.

Picture provided with permission http://www.the-vug.com/vug/vugfakes.html

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 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 technically not a fake or a forgery. The real offense here is the intent to pass car paint off as a mineral.

It is NOT an agate and not approved by the IMA. In short, it is car paint, really. Some entrepreneur decided to take advantage of its beauty and recycle these slabs of car paint. They even go as far as to say the mines are dry. I am sure it is tongue in cheek.

So how is it “made”?

http://fordite.com/Home_Page.html shares the process, “The over sprayed paint in the painting bays gradually built up on the tracks and skids that the car frames were painted on. Over time, many colorful layers built up there. These layers were hardened repeatedly in the ovens that the car bodies went into to cure the paint. Some of these deeper layers were even baked 100 times. Eventually, the paint build-up would become obstructing, or too thick and heavy, and had to be removed.

It’s sparkly like Fairy Dust and I admit, I love it! But in the end, it is just glass. Urban legend has it that Goldstone was an accidental discovery by unspecified Italian monks or the product of alchemy, but there is no pre-Miotti (One original manufacturing process for Goldstone was invented in seventeenth-century Venice by the Miotti family) documentation to confirm this.

Goldstone contains tiny crystals of metallic copper that require special conditions to form properly. The initial batch is melted together from silica, copper oxide, and other metal oxides to chemically reduce the copper ions to elemental copper. The vat is then sealed off from the air and maintained within a narrow temperature range, keeping the glass hot enough to remain liquid while allowing metallic crystals to precipitate from solution without melting or oxidizing. Wikipedia

Colors can include red to rust, green and blue.

My experience with Jet has always been with the matte finished, light weight variety. It is one variety of Coal after all. When ordering a lb. of tumbled “Jet” from a new vendor, I was confused by the Jet’s appearance. It was shiny, almost like a polished Hematite. The weight was right, but the interior and exterior were not what I was used to.

Anthracite (another variety of coal but not the same as Jet). Thanks to the folks and mentors at mindat.org, I learned 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.

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:
1. They may be legitimate minerals and crystals mined in China, like many of the Fluorites are.
2. They may be polished or tumbled in China due to the cheap labor in which to do so.
3. Or they may be MANUFACTURED in China.

These NEW! or RARE! brightly colored Obsidians are nothing more than art glass with color introduced into the process. Brightly colored Cobalt Blues, Emerald Greens, Rich Reds, Golden Yellows, and deep Purples are just a few of the varieties you can find out there.

When I first saw this stuff, I was told it was Obsidian with Mt. St. Helen’s ash “introduced” into it. When anything is “introduced”? that means it is NOT naturally occurring.

The story was that it was reconstituted glass with Mt. St. Helen’s ash introduced into the process. Reconstituting is a process where the material 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…”

Opalite is man made, lab created, synthetic opalized glass. It is not in any way, shape or form a type of Opal no matter what fancy story someone attaches to it.

Siberian Blue Quartz (Russia) is lab grown quartz colored by cobalt.

The Siberian Green Quartz (Russia) has been “regrown” from natural Quartz combined with chemicals to produce its intense color.

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. Turquenite is made from Howlite crushed to powder, with blue dye and resin added then compacted and polished.

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.