What Most Crystal Sites Won’t Tell You About Treatments
Heat-treated, irradiated, dyed, stabilised. The honest issue with crystal treatments is disclosure, not the treatments themselves. Here is the guide.
Daniel Ashford
A hobbyist mineral and crystal collector since 2008, he covers the geological side of the site: composition, formation, identification, and what a stone in your hand physically is.
The Beginner’s Guide to Crystals: Where to Start
The most useful first move with crystals is learning what they actually are. Here is the honest beginner's guide, starting from the mineralogy.
How to Buy Crystals Without Getting Ripped Off
The single question that sorts honest crystal sellers from the rest is: where did this come from? Here is the buyer's guide that comes out of that.
Is There a Difference Between Green and Purple Fluorite?
Green and purple fluorite are the same mineral (CaF₂). The colour differences come from lattice defects and trace elements, not different stones.
Purple Fluorite vs Amethyst
No. Amethyst is a purple variety of quartz, hardness 7. Purple fluorite is calcium fluoride at hardness 4, a different mineral in everything but colour. The two grow into different shapes, and on an uncut crystal the shape is the…
What Counts as a Crystal?
Most of what a shop sells as a crystal is one. Crystallographers settle the question by whether a solid’s atoms are ordered, and they settle it with an X-ray beam rather than by eye, which is why looking hard at…
How Are Crystal Clusters Formed
Crystal clusters form by elimination. Many crystals nucleate on a cavity wall pointing in random directions, and the ones whose fastest growth direction happens to aim into open space overgrow and bury their neighbours. The points on a finished cluster…
Which Crystals Are the Sparkliest
It depends which sparkle you mean. Druzy and pyrite bounce light off many small surfaces, sunstone and moonstone and labradorite work from inside, and spectral colour comes from light travelling through a stone. Pyrite is the loudest of them and…
Is Phantom Quartz the Same as Clear Quartz
Yes. Phantom quartz is clear quartz that paused while it was growing. A film of another mineral settled on the faces it had at that moment, and later quartz sealed the film inside. The outline you can see is the…
What Crystals Are Good for Water Bottles?
Quartz varieties are the safe default. Clear, rose, smoky, amethyst and citrine all handle water, and so does any hard stone with a closed polished surface. The thing to check is what was done to the stone before you bought…
