FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Judith Chen]

Good morning

Can anyone provide any advice on purchasing jade and how I one can you tell if the piece you are interested in is the real thing and not another product that has been dyed and made to look like jade?

Any advice most welcome.

Thank you for reading my post
Judith

[John S. White]

Jades, there are two main types - nephrite and jadeite, are very complex materials and learning all about them requires a lot of effort and time. It is not easy to tell jades from other materials that resemble them, and it may not be easy to tell is a sample has been dyed or otherwise treated. However, there are many good books on the subject easily found. When buying jade the best bet is to deal with a responsible dealer and obtain certification, if possible.

[mihailovici79]

Hello, if you like you can see in my blog, jade from Romania. I found it for the first time in Romania.I have also a collection of rocks and minerals and fossils. Visit:
https://rocimineralefosile-banat.blogspot.com/
(link normalized by FMF)
and tell me if you like it. Thank you.

[mihailovici79]

After processing...

[lingxiaoxiao]

Hello,mihailovici79
I like you samples very much . and I have a question. what kind of jade do your samples belong to? Nephrite or Jadeite?
Best Wishes
Ling

[mihailovici79]

The above is Jadeite, but I found a harder variety of dark green, 7 Mohs hardness.

[cascaillou]

In my eyes, this doesn't look like jadeite. Have you accurately measured the specific gravity?

Could be massive vesuvianite or serpentine

[mihailovici79]

Yeah is much harder like serpentine and it have close hardness of cuartz. One expert from Geological Institute Bucarest said that is a variety of jade. Look other kind of jade.

[cascaillou]

If hardness is close to quartz, that might still be vesuvianite, measuring specific gravity would help identifying it.
Is it actually mined in romania?

[alfredo]

Judith and Mihailovici, A couple years ago there was a period when a lot of repetitive jade-related questions were surfacing on Mindat, so I wrote a brief article answering some of these questions: https://www.mindat.org/article.php/883/Jade
Much of this you probably already know, but I hope you might find a few more bits of useful information.
Best wishes,
Alfredo

[mihailovici79]

No its just find by me. Have specific gravity 2.86. (Have 886 g in air and 576g in water).

[mihailovici79]

[Judith Chen]

Alfredo

Thanks so much for posting the link and referring me to your article on Mindat. Your article was really informative and given me lots of food for thought.

Many thanks and best wishes
Judith

[mihailovici79]

Alfredo thank u for post.
Mihail

[cascaillou]

Mihailovici, concerning your rock, can it be scratched by a piece of glass? also, does it scratch glass?

according to the specific gravity it could be serpentinite (a rock mainly composed of serpentine group minerals) or nephrite (amphibole group).
Maw-sit-sit aka jade-albite (a rock mainly composed of kosmochlor mixed with some jadeite and other minerals) also fits the SG but it doesn't really look like it.
One thing for sure, it isn't jadeite and it isn't vesuvianite.

There was an interesting jade discussion on gemologyonline(dot)com which included an valuable quote from the book 'The Jade Enigma':

In defining both jadeite and nephrite, texture is as important as mineralogical composition. The material must be tough, compact, and fine grained.
In the case of nephrite, it must consist of fine interlocking fibers. If the fibers are not interlocking, but simply parallel or sub parallel, the material lacks the necessary toughness and therefore can not be considered nephrite.
The author defines jade as any member of the pyroxene or amphibole group that possesses the necessary textural characteristics to impart toughness, as well as commonly accepted refractive index and specific gravity of jadeite/nephrite.
Note that nephrite has a fibrous structure while jadeite has a granular structure.