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crystals and minerals

A Return

This fluorite came back to us today, its an interesting piece, quite large and appears a purple blue colour, but it’s real magic shows when you hold it up to the light!

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crystals and minerals

Crystal Specimens

So people are drawn to stones for many reasons, whether they’re collectors, therapists, jewellery makers or just fascinated.

rhodocrosite crystal
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.

rhodonite crystal
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.

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crystals and minerals

Blue Amber Sphere

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

blue amber sphere
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crystals and minerals

Gorgeous Kunzite Tumblestones Bag

kunzite tumblestones

A bargin for today, some lovely hand polished kunzite tumblestones only 1 bag here

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crystals and minerals

Rutile

classic V shape rutile crystal

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.

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crystals and minerals

Ah a little maintenance required

stripping down the cab machine to replace a few items
a 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.
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crystals and minerals

Celestine with Sulphur

celestine and sulphur from Italy

A rare combination of celestine and sulphur formed crystals, from Sicily, Italy, gorgeous formed crystals of celestine with bright yellow sulphur crystals.

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crystals and minerals

Rainbow Garnets

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.

lovely rainbow garnets from Japan
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crystals and minerals

There be gold

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…

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crystals and minerals

Long Blue Kyanite

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.