🔎 UNIDENTIFIED Anyone familiar with the “new find” phantom crystal quartz?

[DawnNC]

Was wondering if any rock hound that cruses the net has seen any of the so called “new find” phantom quartz crystals?

If you type that into ebay search etc; there are multiple colors and quite pricey. I want to call BS on these things as they look too perfectly manufactured or maybe it’s quartz that has been chemically treated. Anyone purchase one of these and/or what do you think?

They are pretty 🤩 but.....

 

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[blauer]

Quartz has treated with dying and irradiation (smokey quartz) for a long time. At first glance this piece looks dyed for sure. I could be wrong without more information.

"New find" seems pretty subjective. They are not for me as they are pretty but unnatural.

 

[dougachim]

Was wondering if any rock hound that cruses the net has seen any of the so called “new find” phantom quartz crystals?

If you type that into ebay search etc; there are multiple colors and quite pricey. I want to call BS on these things as they look too perfectly manufactured or maybe it’s quartz that has been chemically treated. Anyone purchase one of these and/or what do you think?

They are pretty 🤩 but.....

I only buy local rocks from guys who I have known forever.

 

[Red-Coat]

These things began appearing a few years ago starting with yellow and then other colours. They’re usually produced using a genuine quartz cluster as a base, with laboratory ‘regrowth’ and relatively high temperature heating in a furnace in the presence of metallic salts to create different colours, The green ones are heated in the presence of chromium.

The colours are usually unnaturally strong but don’t permeate much beyond the surface. Sometimes you can see marks on the bottom arising from the need to support them on a metal rack in the furnace (often traces of a mesh-like pattern).

The same photograph you posted is being used on at least three internet selling platforms from a vendor using different identities/addresses in China (presumably the same vendor). Similar specimens are being widely sold by others from addresses in China, sometimes with the origin of the specimens claimed as Tibet. All fake. Genuine specimens of coloured phantom quartz do exist (including green ones), but they don’t look like that.

If there was a source of natural specimens with such a spectacular appearance, reputable mineral suppliers would be selling them at very high prices to collectors of geology, but that’s not the case for these items. They’re being peddled as “healing crystals” and other nonsense descriptions, usually at lower prices than a geological specimen would command (although prices can still be quite high), and in suspiciously large quantities for something that’s supposed to be “rare”.

 

[Blackfoot58]

Looks like it would be needed to power a flux capacitor. McFly would like it.

 

[Red-Coat]

 

[antmike915]

Kryptonite