FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[mraffordable]

I thought I should chime in here as a dealer and not a collector. I purchased a flat of "tourmaline" a few years ago from a wholesaler that only told me that the whole lot came from Brazil. There were green crystals on matrix and off. There were some red crystals and some that were red and green toghether. There were some that were more brown in color. Many peices were black schorl. When I labeled it all for sale I just used the term tourmaline, then the color and the species if I could find that out. I understood at that time that the brownish red color was considered dravite.

Most of my customers are not avid mineral collectors and don't care where a particular crystal or mineral came from. My shop is a dreaded metaphysical shop. We only care about what the stone can do.

Just my two cents.