So people are drawn to stones for many reasons, whether they’re collectors, therapists, jewellery makers or just fascinated.
A crystal of rhodocrosite with two small quartz points, this rare mineral mostly from Argentina or Peru is more highly prized when the colour is a deep pink, most often occurs with a cream and pink pattern formation. This ones from Peru.
Here’s a couple of crystals specimens, being a good example of quality and of how the crystal actually is formed, often rarer than more common versions of the mineral.
A rhodonite crystal, quite gemmy from Brazil, more common is the opaque pink with black manganese oxide version that forms in a ‘massive’ formation with no crystal shape.
Gorgeous and fairly rare a lovely blue amber sphere from the dominican republic, its called blue amber because it has a dark smokey look which under UV light gives a bluish tone. Uploaded today
Mostly we mention rutile as those silver or golden threads or hairs within quartz, sometimes the term is also used(perhaps mistakenly) when tourmaline or other minerals are present.
Anyway these are actual rutile crystals on their own.
stripping down the cab machine to replace a few itemsa perished and worn out wheel
we’ve a few machine we can cut and polish with but this combination unit needs a little attention, new belts, wheels & saw blade. Hopefully we can sell a few stones in order to pay for it!
To keep a certain ‘currently home schooled’ 8 year old occupied we’ve loaned him a tumble polisher, forgetting where he decided to ‘borrow’ the rough stone from. Heres some himalayan fluorite getting ready!
lovely deeper green himalayan fluorite getting ready for a tumble session.
A rare combination of celestine and sulphur formed crystals, from Sicily, Italy, gorgeous formed crystals of celestine with bright yellow sulphur crystals.
First discovered in 2004 these rare garnets are andradite garnet with an visual look thats pretty rare amongst the garnet family of minerals.
From near Osaka in Japan, although others have been found from Mexico although they appear slightly different coloured more base colour green than brown.
The lightly polished faces have an iridescent colour that can change when rotated, stunning.
I’m sure Im not alone with the urge to do a little prospecting now and then, I was lucky enough to have a go recently in Scotland, put to shame by my 7 yr old son who battled the wind, rain and water better than I did, unfortunately we didn’t find anything like this lovely gold nugget on quartz from South Africa, but perhaps next time…
Take a look at the longest blue kyanite piece we’ve had to date, not only long big a gorgeous deep bright blue colour as well, from Pakistan. Predominately kyanite is found from Brazil and India, as with other minerals the locality is often apparent from the colour and size variation of the piece.
If you’ve never seen the high grade gem sugilite, here’s your chance. I did a quick search to look for more examples but struggled to find kmany, what I did find was worrying – a lot of fake sugilite, both in polished and rough form, so beware when purchasing. Here’s our lovely piece.