These first showed up at the Denver mineral show in 2009.

Many people were suspicious about these being made by microabrasion, but nothing had been proven either way. I saw Ed Rosenzweig at the Houston mineral show and talked to him about the pieces. He was one of the main dealers selling them at the Springfield show, but as soon as controversy came up, he stopped selling them. He lent me five pieces of hollow galena that he had been told were natural. I also received two samples of hollow galena from an anonymous donor, which he had made by microabrasion.

Lance Kearns at James Madison University offered to let me use the SEM there, so I chose two specimens from Ed and one fake to look at. The fake one still had remnants of abrasive material embedded in the surface – and so did the other two. Here is a picture of a glass ball in one of the specimens from Ed:

The other piece had crystals of aluminum silicate rather than glass spheres – but still abrasives!

This doesn’t prove that all of the hollow galenas are fakes, but there are definitely fake ones out there.

A few years ago I came across a set of cabochons that were made to look like alphabet sets, each one featuring squiggly lines on a translucent near colorless chalcedony.

I didn’t immediately think they were real, so I took a hard look at them and I couldn’t notice anything unusual about them and they certainly didn’t look dyed. A friend of mine is just absolutely fanatic about these sets and would tell me, “but DUDE, one of them sold at auction for almost $20,000!!”, so, his pricing of a couple thousand was very reasonable in his mind. Another dealer had two sets, sold one for a couple thousand and had the other one up on eBay. My wife, Brandy, actually made a banner for him, promoting the eBay auction on the front page of The-Vug.com, to which I received several emails asking why I would be promoting a fake on The-Vug.com.

I had to wonder then what I am being forced to wonder again now. Why would anyone think these are fake? How outlandish does it seem to have these crudely formed alphabet sets produced as fakes, to only release a small amount of them, always in alphabets, rather than beads or things spelled out? It would just seem to me that it would come to no surprise, lapidary items being handcrafted in such a manor would show signs of imperfection. Mass produced fakes, on the other hand, typically are made to impress, usually trying to get a consistent pattern. The odd shaped lines in the alphabet sets screamed “handmade” and not “hand-dyed”.

Many of you already know I have an art gallery in downtown Los Angeles, featuring artwork that highlights natural science and minerals that are nothing short of mouth watering! The minerals featured at the gallery are provided by the sponsors of the gallery and I hand pick many of them. This was the case when I put a set of agate cabochons in the gallery. For several months people were impressed at the fact they were hand carved out of natural colored agate. They didn’t sell, a sad fact for me, so they were returned to the owner.

A few months later, the alphabet cabochons were featured in the “Fakes, Forgeries and Scams” section of Mindat.org. A posting, indicating that the photos from the Zzyzx Gallery facebook account featuring the alphabet cabochons were man-made, not just polished into cabs, but infused with the color and shape of the letters.

Let’s just look at the facts.

A first hand account of the alphabet maker…

I ran into a guy who was cutting these letters and crosses from the criss-cross iron stains in river rolled agates from a remote mountainside in East Java.

I wrote a story about the guy and how these agates were formed. In 2004 and 2005, I collected some rough and set up a workshop in the town of Sukabumi, West Java and hired some kids to produce just crosses for the company Sajen which sells jewelry. Check out their web site, they are a real company.

None of my team were ever as good at selecting the agates with the right shaped lines to make letters. They messed up enough crosses that we never made a dime!

The website IndoAgate.com give this man’s words life, an article written by a geologist with decades of devotion into the region of Thailand and Indonesia

Notice how this set is so different than this set below? If you were going to fake something such as burning letters into agate cabochons, wouldn’t you be a bit better at conforming to a set standard?

Then of course, you can see the NATURAL agate rough for yourself right here…

The reason there are so few of these sets and why the command a price that when you really think about it, is WAY undervalued, would be because the producer of these is the man known as “Mr. Letterman”.

Now, you’ve seen the agate cab sets, the man who polishes them, the undyed rough agate these come from, the website that gives a great report on these agates and my first person verification that the agates I had in my possession did not show anything indicating that these were dyed or “burnt” on, as some individuals are claiming.

All I can say to the detractors now is, there is the proof, if you have to keep thinking it is a scam, maybe you should just look inside yourself for the greed factor.

Unlike these people decrying a “fake” I make sure to do my research first. Just blurting out things as “fact” doesn’t do any good when you have not given the story due diligence. I had exposed the “chinese charoite” a few years ago, but I couldn’t publish the story until I had the stones in my hands. Scratch test, simple proof. What the detractors of the agate cabs had not done was gather proof, but simply go on…a witch hunt.

Still don’t believe me? Go to Java yourself as you are invited in this quote below. Dig it.

In fact this Tuesday August 24th, I will be on a flight to Jakarta (TG433) and everybody is welcome to come on over. The letter guy will be meeting me in the town of Sukabumi, West Java, 5hrs into the mountains from Jakarta on the 25th and all the disbelievers can come along and take the 12 hour bus ride back to his village and watch him carve out letters from agates until their tongues fall out.

Or if they haven’t got any pocket change for a plane ride, email Randy Park at the Bangkok office of the GIA and ask him if the letter and cross agates are anything other than cut and polished agates.

Thats the best I can do you, come see for yourself!

UPDATE- August 25th 2010 -UPDATE

Azeztulite. One of the most foolish scams on the mineral world. Not only are people buying shards of the most common mineral on earth for several dollars per carat, the scam just keeps getting bigger!

One of the reasons I even bother to bring this point up is that I’m seeing all of these variations (all trademarked) whenever the scamsters find enough of a supply to warrant new names.

I was viewing an eBay seller’s account and I saw this nugget, mixed into an account full of interesting minerals…

When this shameful scam will end, nobody can know. We certainly hope it is sooner than later. Azeztulite is broken quartz shards, devoid of worth.

We originally heard about these at the Munich show, however, by the time we went to the booth they were gone. So, I’m both bothered they would bring them to Tucson, yet, happy that John Veevaert got a lovely photograph of one to share with you at home.

Let’s all thank John for showing us this photo!

Stay away from these specimens, fake fluorites from China