I saw your cool rocks post and I have to ask, how do you feel about manmade rocks? One of my favorite rocks is called Blue Goldstone, and it's glass with elements like copper and then something to make it blue. There's also green and gold goldstone, but because of the copper, paired with the dark blue, the rock looks like the night sky. It's one of my favorites.
Oh man, manmade rocks are great!! My citrine is heat-treated, and my bismuth was grown in a lab. I’ve also got some great dyed agate!
(Everyone please take a moment to love and appreciate my manmade Sparkly Girls.)
There’s this elitist attitude out there that you can only like a Cool Rock if it was found in nature Exactly Like That, which is a shame because there are SO MANY manmade rocks worth owning and loving and being your favorite!
Aura quartz, sometimes called rainbow quartz, which is made by coating quartz crystals with metals like titanium or gold!
Fordite, sometimes called motor agate, formed from the buildup of paint in car production lines! Cars are no longer painted this way, so genuine fordite is a rare find and definitely cool to have in your collection!
Sea glass. Sea glass, sea glass, my all time favorite manmade Cool Rock! It’s made from human garbage, usually glass bottles or pottery, which was smoothed by the waves and washed back up on the beach as these beautiful cloudy pebbles! I would love to find some of this for my collection someday.
And of course, I would be remiss not to mention goldstone, sometimes sold as blue sandstone! It’s not just glass full of glitter; there’s a huge process involving the perfect time, temperature, and carefully controlled oxygen levels to turn silica and copper into goldstone. Humans have been making this rock since the 1600s, and probably even before then! There’s a whole fascinating history behind it. It’s truly the grandfather of all manmade Cool Rocks, and thus, an excellent Favorite Cool Rock!
Look, the ONLY requirements for a rock to be a Cool Rock and thus worthy of your collection is that YOU like it. It doesn’t matter if it was made in the earth’s crust or in a lab or by somebody on etsy. It doesn’t matter if you know the science behind it, or even what it’s called. And anyone who says that your favorite rock is not a Valid Rock is missing the point of Cool Rocks.
Manmade rocks are Cool and Excellent rocks!