FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[GneissWare]

Tracy,
Here are a couple of pictures of modern mercury processing in China. Do you think this exceeds the TLV?
Bob

[Tracy]

Oh, the humanity!!!!!

I always wondered what the dude was doing in your avatar photo... :-)

- Tracy

[Peter Megaw]

This is really primitive distillation, but fully functional. It only takes about 500 degrees C to vaporize mercury from cinnabar and most retorts like this run at 600 for greater efficiency. This is a bit higher than you can get out of your kitchen stove, but not a whole lot. Check the hair and teeth and realize that this guy is maybe 42 years old...also note this is probably in his living room so the whole family is dosed with mercury from birth. The underlying tragedy is that there is mercury in flasks at metals refineries around the world that cannot be given away...

[Matt_Zukowski]

Wow, I too did not understand what was happening in your avatar photo. It makes me sad.

[John S. White]

We all know that the Chinese are remarkable artisans, anyone who can carve an intricate ornamental bowl out of tough nephrite with primitive tools would find that creating a fake specimen can be done with one hand tied behind one's back. It does not surprise me at all that there are many fake specimens being sold by Chinese dealers so one must be very careful when buying such. Guess I have been really fortunate because so far I have not acquired any that turned out to be fake upon getting them home and examining them with the microscope. If they look at all suspicious then I will not take a chance on them.

Ironically I never bought one of the fake coppers from China and I wish I had. They were cheap but all I have now are many photos of them. Perhaps I will get another chance. One dealer had them at the last Munich Show (Oct. 2009) and he refused to believe they were fake. As I have mentioned before on FMF there are now coppers from China being sold that are not fake, but they look totally different from the fake ones.

[Carles Curto]

It's well known that some “artisanal” practices are usual among Chinese dealers. In the case of cinnabar crystals, a lot of them are neatly broken when the pieces are trimmed. Most of the broken crystals are perfectly adjusted to its initial place so, most of the dealers carefully glue them.
Some of the glued crystals can be “discovered” observing them trough a simple 10x lens, but in some other cases they are not so easy observed. An immersion on acetone is definitive but... “too late, cock, too late”.

[Jesse Fisher]

Well, John, if you're considering starting a collection of faked specimens, those irradiated Pakistani topazes still seem to be readily available. I saw several dealers with them at the Inn Suites, and I'm sure there were more that got held up by customs or immigration and didn't make the show.

[Jason]

you got that right John..good point..some of those carvings that were done with stone age tools are amazing..any fake is childs play compared to that...lololol

[John S. White]

Jesse:

I am not actually collecting fakes, but since I have some really good photos of the copper fakes and have posted some comments about them, I figured I should have at least one for show and tell. I am not familiar with the topazes you mentioned.

[Jesse Fisher]

John, I'm sure you're familiar with the sherry-colored topazes from the pegmatites of Northern Pakistan. Next time you're at a show check the Pakistani and Afghani dealers stock for ones that have a dark "burnt caramel" color. Any associated quartz will likely be a dark smokey color. I saw a number of these at Tucson.

[Jason]

ohh..jesse...spot on buddy..I was putting disclaimers in my ebay ads about those topaz...i was selling natural colored pak. topaz and was getting beat down by those irridated crap..I knew two of the sellers who were selling them..1 on ebay..I know exactly the place they were sending them to get zapped in Lahore..made me mad..my nat. were selling like crap but those burnt fakes were selling like hotcakes..I always be putting is disclaimers calling out other dealers on ebay..did it with the tanzy guys and the stupid "patroke" green kunzites..had to put a public service announcement about those also..get emails all the time from folks happy i am doing it..not one mention in the ad that those greens will lose half the color in 6 months and all the color in a year..the sellers I know to...they are the ones sending the toipaz and kunzite to Lahore to get zaped..can't plead ignorance on that..was seeing dang 100 gram junk kunzite crystals..that were crappy opaque white that had been zapped to a bright green selling for $70-$80...mine were selling for a fraction..did you see anything saying these are irridated or artifically enhanced..heck no..to get 1 kilo of crap kunzites or topaz irridated in Lahore is $25..checked myself..saw dollars bills flying out the window..hell if those guys are making money hand over fist on junk maybe I need to too...but the difference is I am honest and let people know..honesty goes a long way in this biz...once you lose that..you are out

[Jesse Fisher]

The trouble with a place like e-bay is that I'm not sure if very many of the buyers are sophisticated enough to know, or even care about the difference between natural and "enhanced" minerals. Perhaps that's why so many sellers seem to get away with it.

I have an Afghani friend here in California who has dealt in minerals and gem rough for many years, and is a pretty honest fellow. Last year he told me that someone from Hong Kong had approached him wanting to purchase a whole bunch of low quality kunzite he had sitting around as he couldn't sell it on the collectors market. He ask me why someone wanted all that stuff and was apparently willing to pay a good price. Not really knowing, I speculated that perhaps the buyer was going to have it irradiated and turn it into beads. That's exactly what happened, as it turned out! I feel sorry for people that buy that stuff as they're likely to end up with a bunch of ugly gray-white beads in about 6 months.

[Les Presmyk]

A few years ago at the Tucson Show, some uniquely colored kunzites were purchased by a prominent American dealer. They still had "pocket mud" on them and looked very natural. The American dealer showed them around, very proudly, until it was pointed out the crystals had been irradiated. That was 4 or 5 days after the initial purchase had been made and when the dealer went back to the motel, the Pakistani dealer had already skipped town. Fortunately for the American dealer, the crystals were gem quality and were sold to a gem dealer, knowing full well they had been irradiated.

I learned a long time ago to never undestimate the abilities of the locals to fake specimens. After all, these folks have nothing but time and if they can spend a day gluing a crystal onto a piece of matrix and make an extra $5 (or more likely a lot more) then why not? They think anyone spending money on rocks is crazy anyway so let the buyer beware.

Let us not forget what people have learned over the years from the time honored tradition of artistically working, reworking and enhancing fossils.

[Carles Millan]

I must inform that after an accurate inspection in person by several expert collectors, this specimen happened to be repaired instead of forged, contrary to what I firmly believed. It seems very likely that the crystal got separated from the matrix during the saw operation and then glued on the right place without the vendor disclosing that fact. As said above, he was a Chinese dealer in the 2004 Munich show.

Many thanks to all the fellow forum members that spent their valuable time to post their opinions here.

[h.abbasi]

Hi all,
I think when we see a Chinese dealer , we must be cautious.
Meanwhile ,I want to advice you that the crystal from China maybe are dummy , Chinese are cheat , rather .
I saw a video that show how a Sinitic made Amethyst, last year.
I seeing some Chinese dealer every month, but I never buy any crystall frome Chinese dealer ...!