A free guide from Crystalier
26 stones. The fakes you'll actually meet in shops, and the simple tests that expose them.
No lab equipment. No gemology degree. Just your eyes, your fingertips, and the flashlight on your phone, standing right there at the shop table.
You know the moment
Maybe it was a strand of turquoise at a gem show. Maybe a piece of moldavite online that seemed a little too affordable. You turned it in the light, and a quiet voice asked, is this even real?
Here's what most sellers won't say out loud. A large share of what's sold as natural stone is dyed, treated, manufactured, or mislabeled. Often the seller doesn't know either.
This guide replaces that wondering with knowing.
Inside the guide
For every stone: what's actually being sold under its name, how to check it right there in the shop, and the one detail to remember if you remember nothing else.
Turquoise, citrine, amber, moldavite, and jade. The counterfeits you're most likely holding right now, and the tests that settle it in under a minute.
Amethyst, rose quartz, black tourmaline, carnelian, lapis, malachite, and more. Learn what the real versions look like, and what the glass copies get wrong.
Opalite, goldstone, cherry quartz, and the chameleon stone behind half the fakes on the market. Nobody at the shop will tell you these pages.
Larimar, charoite, sugilite, and cinnabar, the stone so many of you have asked about. Know them before you meet a counterfeit first.
A page from the guide
If you remember one thing
Turquoise
Real turquoise varies. No two stones match, and even a single stone shifts shade across its own surface. So when every bead on a strand is the same flawless blue, be suspicious of the perfection. The earth doesn't work that neatly.
Twenty-six of these. Each one something you can use the very next time you shop.
A note from Roman
I've spent years tracing where stones come from and how they end up in shops. Somewhere along the way I learned an uncomfortable truth about how much of the market isn't what the label says.
This isn't about fear. Buying stones should stay a joy. And if a stone in your collection turns out to be dyed or man-made, you don't have to throw it away. If it's been sitting on your dresser keeping you company for years, it has done its work.
This guide is for the next purchase. So you can walk up to any table, pick up any stone, and know what you're holding.
Take care of your energy,
— Roman ValeCRYSTALIER
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Keep it on your phone. Print it and tuck it in your bag for the next gem show. It was made to be used standing at a table, not read once and forgotten.