Real vs Fake Crystals
Plenty of “crystals” for sale are dyed, heat-treated, reconstituted or just glass. None of that is necessarily fraud — but you should know what you’re buying. Here are the honest tells.
Quick tests before you buy
- Too perfect, too cheap, too saturated: uniform electric colour across a whole batch usually means dye or glass.
- Bubbles: trapped round bubbles mean glass, not quartz.
- Temperature: real stone feels cool and warms slowly; glass and plastic warm fast.
- Hardness: glass is ≈5.5 — real quartz (7) scratches it, not the other way round.
- Dye in cracks: colour pooling in fractures is a dye giveaway (common in agate and “turquoise” howlite).
Frequently asked questions
Is heat-treated citrine fake?
Most citrine on the market is heat-treated amethyst. It’s real quartz, just not naturally that colour — look for the tell-tale white base and concentrated orange tips.
How can I tell real turquoise from howlite?
Dyed howlite mimics turquoise cheaply. Howlite is softer (Mohs ≈3.5 vs turquoise ≈5–6) and its natural colour is white with grey veining; dye often rubs off with acetone.