Most crystals sold today are natural. A meaningful number are natural stone that has been heated, irradiated, coated or dyed. And a small handful of very popular names are not stone at all, they are glass. None of that is automatically a problem. What matters is that you know which one you are holding, because the difference should be reflected in the price and in how the seller describes it.
Here is the honest breakdown, including where our own stock sits.
Treated does not mean fake
It is worth clearing this up first, because the word treated makes people uneasy.
Humans have been heating and polishing stone for as long as we have been picking it up. A heat treated amethyst is still amethyst. A polished tumble is still the mineral it started as, just smoother. Treatment becomes a problem in exactly one situation, which is when it is hidden from you and priced as though it were not there.
The useful distinction is not real against fake. It is natural, enhanced, or manufactured, and a good seller will tell you which without being asked.
Natural stone, as it came out of the ground
Cut, polished, sometimes tumbled, but chemically unchanged. This is the majority of what you will buy: amethyst, clear quartz, rose quartz, fluorite, labradorite, jasper, agate, obsidian, tourmaline, selenite, moonstone and most of the specimens on any shop's shelves.
The giveaway of natural stone is imperfection. Inclusions, uneven colour, a fracture, a slightly duller patch. Emerald almost always has internal inclusions, which the trade calls the jardin. Those are features, not faults, and they are much harder to fake than they are to find.
Heated stone
Heat changes the colour of some minerals, permanently and stably. It happens in the earth as well as in a kiln.
- Citrine. Most citrine on the market began as amethyst and was heated. Natural citrine exists and tends toward a smoky, pale champagne colour rather than the deep orange most people picture. If a citrine cluster is bright orange with white bases, it has almost certainly been heated. It is still quartz and it is still lovely.
- Prasiolite, or green amethyst. Almost all of it is heated amethyst. We say so on our prasiolite collection page.
- Carnelian. Frequently heat treated agate, which deepens the orange.
Coated and bonded stone
The aura quartz family is real quartz that has had a fine layer of metal vapour bonded to its surface in a vacuum chamber. Aqua aura uses gold, angel aura uses platinum or silver, titanium aura uses titanium, and so on. The result is a genuine quartz point with a permanent iridescent coating.
This is manufactured, and any shop selling it should say so. We describe the process on each aura collection page, including aqua aura and sunset aura. The coating is surface deep, which is why the care advice is to wipe rather than scrub.
Dyed stone
Dye is common, cheap, and usually obvious once you know what to look for.
- Bright agate slices in electric blue, hot pink or lime green are dyed. Natural agate does occur in blues and pinks, but in muted tones.
- Howlite and magnesite are frequently dyed blue and sold as turquoise. Real turquoise is considerably more expensive, so price is a strong hint.
- Dyed quartz turns up in cheap bead strands, often in colours quartz simply does not come in.
To spot dye, look into the cracks. Dye pools in fractures and along the porous seams, so you will often see a deeper, more saturated line exactly where the stone is weakest. Colour that is perfectly even across a whole piece is also suspicious, because natural stone rarely bothers to be that consistent.
Stones that are actually glass
This is the group people are most surprised by, because several of them are extremely popular and are sold everywhere under crystal names.
- Goldstone and blue goldstone are glass with copper or cobalt flecks suspended in them. They were invented, not mined. They are also genuinely beautiful, and the sparkle is unmistakable.
- Opalite is a milky manufactured glass. It is not opal and it is not moonstone, despite being sold as both.
- Cherry quartz is a red glass with white veining. We say this plainly on our cherry quartz collection page.
Glass gives itself away in a few ways. Look for perfectly round internal bubbles, which stone does not produce. Glass also warms in your hand faster than stone does, and it often shows a slight mould seam or a conchoidal chip with a glassy shell shaped surface.
Plenty of people love these materials anyway and work with them as stones of intention. There is nothing wrong with that. What would be wrong is selling them at natural stone prices without saying what they are.
Names that should make you ask a question
The crystal trade invents names constantly, and a made up name is not proof of anything, but some patterns are worth noticing.
Names built around a fruit, a dessert or a mood are usually trade names rather than mineral names. Sometimes there is a real and interesting stone underneath, as with grape agate, which is a botryoidal chalcedony from Sulawesi, or pork stone, which is a banded calcite. Sometimes there is not. Either way it is fair to ask what the actual material is, and a shop that knows its stock will be able to tell you.
What to ask before you buy
- Is this natural, treated, or manufactured?
- If it is treated, how?
- What is the mineral name behind the trade name?
- Where is it from?
You do not need to interrogate anybody. But those four questions will very quickly separate a shop that buys carefully from one that buys by the pallet, and the answers should come easily rather than defensively.
Frequently asked questions
Is heated citrine still real citrine?
It is real quartz, and the trade sells it as citrine. Whether you consider it real citrine depends on how strictly you define the word. It is not a scam, but it should be disclosed, and it should not be priced like rare natural citrine.
Is aura quartz a real crystal?
The quartz is real. The colour is a manufactured metal coating applied to the surface. Both halves of that sentence should appear in any honest description.
How can I tell if my crystal is dyed?
Look into the cracks for pooled colour, check whether the shade is one the mineral naturally occurs in, and be suspicious of perfectly even saturation. A cotton pad with a little acetone on an inconspicuous spot will sometimes lift dye, though it can also damage some stones, so use it as a last resort.
Does it matter if a crystal is man-made?
For your practice, that is genuinely your call, and many people work happily with glass materials. For your wallet it matters a great deal, because manufactured material costs a fraction of what natural stone does and should be priced accordingly.
Are cheap crystals always fake?
No. Amethyst, quartz, agate and jasper are all abundant, and a small tumbled stone is genuinely inexpensive to produce. Cheap becomes a warning sign when the stone is one that is naturally rare, such as turquoise, moldavite or emerald.
How we handle this
Every stone we carry is hand selected, and where a piece is heated, coated or manufactured we say so on the collection page rather than leaving you to work it out. If you ever want to know more about something specific, ask. We would rather answer the question than have you wondering.
You can browse every stone we carry with its full meaning and background in our A to Z of crystal meanings and healing properties, or start with our beginner's guide to choosing a first set. We ship Canada wide and worldwide from Regina, Saskatchewan, with prices in Canadian dollars and no customs or duty on Canadian orders.