How to spot fake crystals
Like me, I am sure that there are crystal enthusiasts out there who want a genuine product for the money that is being spent. Unfortunately, due to the popularity of crystals, some nasty fakes have made their way into the market and it is seriously infuriating. What’s worse is chemical and plastic by-products from various manufacturing processes being sold as crystals with a whole set of “spiritual properties”, or genuine crystals being sold as something else with a different set of properties than they originally had. After spending years looking through crystal stores, browsing books and online, I’ve learnt to catch the fakes. Here are some common fakes, I’ll make another post later about chemical byproducts and fake gems made of glass, silicone, and paint. There is just so many fakes on the market I can’t type it all out in one day.
Citrine It is really rare to actually find genuine citrine. Genuine citrine is usually very pale yellow or a black-yellow colour and due to its rarity is very expensive. It is usually found in wand or point formations in a store. Faked citrine is extremely obvious. Faked citrine often comes in geode or cluster formations, and is extremely bright yellow-orange. It is extremely rare to find real citrine in your average minerals store, a majority of stores are overrun by these fakes. Do you know what else comes in geode and cluster formation very often? Amethysts. That’s right, your citrine is really an amethyst that has been heat treated until the colour turns yellow. So, it’s not really a fake mineral in a sense. Your citrine is probably a genuine rock. But it’s not a real citrine either. One of the first things that alerted me to the fake citrine issue was the properties itself. Citrine is meant to be an energising stone. But do any of you actually feel that when you wear it? Probably not. I know I felt sleepy when I wore my fake citrines, and sleep is the very thing amethysts are known to help with! Turquoise Turquoise is almost always faked. Real turquoise is extremely prized and quite expensive. The best way to pick up faked turquoise is a number of factors in the appearance of it. Most often, turquoise is actually dyed howlite. The webbing (little black lines running through the stone) are less varied and too perfect looking to be a natural formation. If you run your fingernail over the webbing and the webbing catches your nail then it is a genuine stone. If the webbing is perfectly flat then the stone is a fake. Fake turquoise seems to be also duller than real turquoise and the stone is the same colour over the whole piece. Real turquoise rarely has a uniform colour and if it does it is cut and polished until it is extremely shiny and it is then sold at a very expensive price and usually in the Persian market only. Malachite Fake malachites are unfortunately everywhere in mineral stores these days. Fake malachite is a dull colour, it feels very light, and the surface has a soft feel. It makes a dull sound when it hits another malachite. The green stripes in the stone are too uniform and perfect, it warms up in your hand. Real malachite is cold, hard and very heavy. It is shiny, always green (never any other colour) and the banding patterns are never uniform. It will stay cold in your hand for a very long time before warming up, just like every other genuine crystal. If two malachites hit each other they will sound like glass. Two fake malachites tapped together will make a soft thud noise. Pyrite Unfortunately, there are fake pyrites coming into the market made of a sparkly silver glue. The same sparkly silver glue is being used to glue different types of crystals together as well, and then being sold to you like a crystal cluster fused together with “pyrite”, as if it formed naturally this way. Real pyrite is chunky, shiny, and looks like gold although never as yellow as real gold. That’s why it’s sometimes been called fools gold. It’s little nobs and holes and nodules are very big. It can come in a silver colour as well and if it is genuine it is very sparkly, but sparkles only with the same colours of the stone- as in silver pyrite sparkles a white colour, gold pyrite sparkles yellow. Real pyrite is very heavy. Fake pyrite is dull, sometimes has a black hue, it has very small nodules and nobs and chunks, and sometimes sparkles rainbow colours or does not sparkle much at all. It is very light weight and will turn black if your skin rubs on it too much. Rose and clear quartz, amethysts, obsidians, onyx, labradorite, moonstone, and fluorites There is sadly a lot of fakes for these favourites as well, but particularly more so in jewelry stores. It is easy to pick these fakes up in a jewelry store. Fake points are made of resin, are too rounded on their edges, the stones are too uniform in colour, too dark in colour, too clear (if clear quartz), inclusions look like plastic folded over itself. They sound like plastic if you tap them together, and they are very light weight. If you tap your fingernail on it it feels too soft. These fakes are often also made of colored glass if they are bigger pieces. Fake rose quartz is a little harder to spot, but one dead give away is the weight of it and the sound it makes if tapped to another stone. It just doesn’t sound like a rock would sound. Fake obsidian is easy to spot. Genuine obsidian is volcanic glass, and if held to a light may have some dirt or rock like residues visible, will always be very sharp if in a point form, and will never be so black around the edges that you cant see the light through it. Fake obsidian is often just black coloured glass or resin and is often too dark and too light weight. Moonstones and opals are often faked with opalite, a man made iridescent glass. Moonstones are also often faked with cloudy coloured quartz with a bit of iridescence being added to it, and labradorites are faked with some sort of iridescent material on a black background, encased in what looks like just resin and shaped in such a way to create shadowing. Fluorites are often just layered coloured glass or resin, they feature too many colours and too much perfection in the green and purple banding of colours to be a natural formation. The stone will have a layer of purple, followed by green, followed by purple, then green over and over, etc. Fake Fluorite has a plastic feel, it’s sounds like plastic when its tapped on another stone, its light weight and even if it is glass it feels too light weight. Genuine Fluorite has less vibrant and frequent colour banding, it is expensive, and it is very heavy for even a crystal point that can fit in your palm.
Agates and dyed agates Natural Agates are a glass formed by years and years of a liquid being pushed into a hole and then out of the same hole in the rock much in the same way tides ebb and flow, leaving a layer in the rock which then dries before the liquid comes back to make a new layer. Faked agates are made with resin and the layers are again too uniform, it is too light weight, and if it is poor quality, will look like a child painted some plastic in stripes and then covered it in more plastic then stuck some rock like substance on the edges. Often, agate is also dyed bright colours and sold to you with different metaphysical properties for each colour. Agate is really brown, grey, black and white and occasionally peach or orange/red in its stripes, it never forms in these bright colours of pink, blue, purple, green etc. I’ve even seen some stores selling green dyed agate and telling people it’s jade. Like??? um..?
