In a perfect example of Namibian forward thinking, in 2010, the Minister of Mines told the artisan miner population to avoid the sale of faked and created mineral specimens. While fakes from Namibia have always been somewhat uncommon, a few mineral dealers have been temporarily disappointed when a flat of crafted specimens make their way onto the mineral marketplace. The clusters from Erongo are typically the most forged. The feldspar matrix can have aquamarine and fluorite crystals glued on with bits of mica over-top the glue. Yet, the natural clusters are so good, it keeps mineral collectors coming back.

This was from Isak Katali’s announcement at the opening of the Uiba Oas Crystal Market, where the local dealers can set up shop in this government sponsored building, providing a centralized buying market as well as shade in the treeless Namibian desert.

Namibia is a wonderful country to visit. The beautiful scenery, the exotic wildlife and the amazing people all make for an unforgettable experience. To add the fact that such a bounty of fine crystallized minerals for sale are there is another bonus to a desert paradise!

Check out this handy travel guide, it is just like the one I used when I visited Namibia
Namibia, 4th: The Bradt Travel Guide

Embrace the power of the Lemurian Quartz Crystals, from the frosty hills of Mount Shasta.

Learn the true secrets of crystal power in this video!

“Article” on meteorite find in the UK

Is this a meteorite?

Check out this article…the meteorite is described as
“black with a shiny crystal-like gleam”
“thought it was a lump of coal”

Are we sure it is not just a piece of slag or maybe a tektite. Hey, good for the kid for finding a rock in the back yard, but did they verify the specimen with ANYONE else besides the parents and eBay? It doesn’t say so in the article. Sloppy reporting for sure!

Stuff tends to spread like wildfire on the internet, and anything that drags you away from Twitter or Facebook will usually be either something completely amazing or, as more commonly experienced, a complete and utter hoax. I genuinely worry about the people that fall for this stuff – if you’re buying meteories off the internet, then chances are you’re probably being scammed. I could go outside and buy some red sandstone, take a welder to it, and claim it was from Mars. Would I make a ton of money? MAYBE!

I have a friend who is an avid meteorite hunter and he swears by the book Field Guide to Meteors and Meteorites. He has gone to Morocco and been on the trail of meteorite falls all over the United States. The amount of work that he puts into tracking, sourcing and looking for meteorites is much different than the standard, “hey, this black rock looks like a meteor” that you see in so many stories like this.

Click Here to Purchase the Book

The 2008 edition of The-Vug.com Quarterly Volume 1 #4 is a special issue devoted to fake mineral information!

The-Vug.com Quarterly Magazine was published from 2008-2012, with 16 issues devoted to several topics of mineralogical interest.
You can purchase the HARDCOVER 324 page complete reprint for the LOW price of $34.95 plus shipping. It is a perfect coffee table sized book and the “Fakes” issue can sell for as high as $70.00 on the secondary market.
Click on the link above to purchase the book directly from the publisher or check them out at
www.fortysevenpress.com

The image above is a page out of The-Vug.com Quarterly Magazine, which you can buy directly from the publisher, FortySevenPress.com. You can see, this stuff is now being marketed as a material for cheap beads, like the auction below.

Take a look at these samples of “Chinese Charoite” on ebay!

Versus the real deal Charoite, like the examples below.

A while ago I wrote about the program on the Travel Channel, “Best Places to Find Cash and Treasures”. The program has the following premise, The Host guides viewers to a region of America to search out minerals, gems, and other collectable items. The host then takes the items found and has them cut, polished and sometimes set into jewelry, then appraised to be sold. Sometimes even sold on the show.

I have no problems with the premise of this show. There is certainly nothing wrong with promoting mineral collecting. Selling your finds usually doesn’t accompany a mineral collecting trip, because sometimes a mineral collecting trip is a very non-productive event. Usually, if you find something really incredible, you keep it. It gets sold when you either die or need money for your kid’s heart transplant. Even the most bloodthristy field collectors who collect to sell keep the best stuff for their collections. They program doesn’t even touch on this kind of collecting/selling aspect…no, everything is done as GREED as the main factor.

The host of the second season of this program, Becky Whorley, was pretty focused on the financial aspect. However, as an hour long program, she did have a fun attitude and seemed to be really interested in why things were formed and found. The second host is ONLY concered about money and now that it is only a half hour long, the greed seems to fill the entire episode. Mineral collecting is a fun hobby, but what fun is it when GREED is the main motivating factor!?!

Watch the show, on the Travel Channel. Count how many dollar signs you see in the show. Watch out for the SALTED tailing piles, the SALTED finds, the horrible safety violations and the general poor job of representing our hobby.

Smoky Quartz. One of the popular faked varieties of Quartz. But all the NATURAL Smoky Quartz has really made faking it kind of pointless.

Well, in Romania, the regular Quartz isn’t good enough…see this natural colored one below.

Take that quartz above and stick it in a hot radiation chamber and BLAMO, aluminum ions are activated, forming a bond reflecting light back out, making our eyes see a deep smoky color, as in the photo below.

I have been looking for awhile for a really good fake Malachite Stalactite specimen on eBay to show you, however, I haven’t seen any on eBay in a long time. A good thing too!

But Mike from Geological Desires showed me a fantastic fake specimen…

What they do is take some powdered Malachite and spray it onto some plasterized Malachite Stalactite base. When you hit it with the UV light you can see all the glue glowing bright yellow/orange in the background.

So, when you see a Malachite Stalactite specimen, check it out for the powdered Malachite surface and check it out with a UV light first to see if the glue stands out!

Hello everyone!

While we were visiting the Collector’s Edge in Golden Colorado we got the chance to see their many flats of FAKE MINERALS that they had pulled out of collections over the years.

Here are some pictures of fake minerals from their collection…can you spot the fakeness?

Here are all three of the minerals…

Quartz with Garnets…

Cerussite with Malachite

Calcite on Basalt from India

Well, the Garnets are glued on and surrounded by some glued on mica, used to hide the glue marks!

The Cerussite is glued on as well, surrounded by a dusting of Malachite around the glued edges!

The Calcite was cut off and glued onto the matrix.

But all three of them look normal, don’t they?