20 Most Beautiful Minerals And Stones in the World

[demmiblue]

Luz Opal with “The Galaxy” inside




Opal with the Ocean inside




Titanium Quartz




Sunset Fire Opal




Bismuth






More: http://www.wherecoolthingshappen.com/20-most-beautiful-minerals-and-stones-in-the-world/

[station001]

1. I've always liked

how hematite looked once polished

[demmiblue]

4. Cool... they look like little drops of liquid metal.

Welcome to DU!

[DFW]

45. Looks like a still shot from Terminator II n/t

[femmocrat]

2. That watermelon tourmaline is super cool!!!

[calimary]

17. That - and the giant amethyst "cathedral"!

WANT...

[lovemydog]

21. Yeah, the giant amethyst - I didn't know they ever get this big!

[calimary]

22. Want!!!

[hifiguy]

29. That looks like a pic of deep space taken by the Hubble telescope.

[lovemydog]

30. It does!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

46. That's one hell of a geode!!

[lovemydog]

20. Yeah. I'll have a slice.

[tblue37]

3. Gorgeous! K&R. Thanks for the moment of unexpect beauty and delight. nt

[blogslut]

5. Nice.

I'm currently obsessed with Labradorite:



I've also been messing around with making faux crystal with borax:



Here's a link to a tutorial: http://dans-le-townhouse.blogspot.com/2015/01/diy-borax-crystals.html

[station001]

6. That top one is beautiful!

[blogslut]

7. That's the labradorite.

Even the less quality grades have a blue flash. Here's the stuff on Google images: http://www.google.com/search?safe=off&hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=992&bih=497&q=labradorite&oq=labradorite&gs_l=img.3..0l10.853.4490.0.5058.11.11.0.0.0.0.275.1333.0j5j3.8.0.msedr...0...1ac.1.64.img..3.8.1332.zOcpoljCqAo

[lovemydog]

19. This one looks like stained glass - so cool:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://fineartamerica.com/art/all/labradorite/all&h=900&w=900&tbnid=Qc-7vaovluzHsM:&zoom=1&docid=0snmmr2oRHzMhM&hl=en&ei=jN9GVeWCLInVsAXOj4HIAg&tbm=isch&ved=0CFwQMyggMCA

[Manifestor_of_Light]

47. I have some labradorite beads.

[blogslut]

50. I have just a few tiny flat teardrop c grade beads

...but I think i chose a good cut for such a low grade. At first glance they look like dirty translucent gray stones but when they catch the light that bright blue chatoyancy catches the eye. I made a pair of dainty scrolly earrings using bright copper wire, a clear AB bicone and one Labradorite dangling off the bottom. I love them, the copper really works well with the beads.

[calimary]

16. Labradorite is FABULOUS! Kinda like a "poor woman's opal." The fire and inner flashes of color

are just unbelievable! I fell in love with labradorite awhile ago - magnificent! And THANKS for the crystal-growing tutorial! How durable is that aqua-colored cluster? How big is it? I think I'd want to wire-wrap that one.

[blogslut]

25. You'd definitely have to seal it in resin.

That's some other person's tutorial so I can't say how big the cluster is. If you give the solution some form to adhere to then I guess there's no telling how big you can make it. I used cotton crochet thread and needle tatted forms and hung them into a glass of the stuff.

Colored thread made the crystals look pretty cool. I took one and painted it with gold acrylic and a coat of clear nail polish to give it shine. It's pretty but would fall apart if I gave it a good whack.

[WinkyDink]

8. I love rocks and minerals! I had a high old time sifting through this:

http://emeraldvillage.com/store/cart.php?m=product_list&c=2

I found garnets, amethyst, different quartzes, etc.!

[demmiblue]

9. That is right up my alley!

I think my interest started as a kid with the souvenir pencils that had tiny stones in a clear tube. To me, it was like having an abundance of riches!

[WinkyDink]

26. My interest began by growing up hard by THIS:

http://www.lostcave.com/

[murielm99]

10. Opals have always fascinated me.

I had a beautiful antique opal ring with three stones. My daughter has always loved it. I gave it to her for her twenty-first birthday. She wears it always.

I still have the pendant that goes with the ring. Someday I will give her that, too. I don't want to part with it yet, although I know it will go to the right person.

[demmiblue]

28. Me, too.

They always have so many neat variations.

It is always nice to have something to pass down through the generations, especially when you know that it will be treasured!

[shenmue]

11. I used to love to see the minerals room

at this museum in Connecticut.

[CrawlingChaos]

12. Very beautiful

I'm such a dork when it comes to this stuff - I love beautiful minerals and find them endlessly fascinating. Ever since my childhood visits to the natural history museum I have geeked out over pretty rocks.

Did you know this one, the beautiful blood red realgar, is actually arsenic? I believe it's actually somewhat dangerous to touch it:

[img][/img]

[calimary]

15. Just utterly sigh-worthy ANYWAY!

Look at those crystals... and the color. And the structure - DANG... I'm a nut for this stuff, too. I've been a rock hound pretty much ever since I could bend over and pick one up!

[CrawlingChaos]

23. Beauty can be dangerous

How many times do we learn that lesson in life? It's almost like the blood-red poison apple, tempting us with it's luscious color.

[PasadenaTrudy]

39. Last year

I was in Albuquerque, NM, and spent hours at the natural history museum mineral collection. Some jaw-dropping pieces there!

[calimary]

40. There were two different lapidary stores I used to love to go visit - until they both closed.

SADNESS! The specimens you could find there - some of them were on formal display, while others were in big bins or baskets for you to fish through by hand. YUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYY!!!!!!!

I have been a raving nut for rocks and minerals and fossils since I could first bend down and pick one up. I used to make little display boxes with little rocks and pebbles from my little collection, and try to classify them and label them and all. if I couldn't find examples of them in my books, I'd just make up names for them! When we moved, my mother didn't have the heart to leave my rock collection behind. So she boxed them up and labeled them "Books." Atagirl, Mom!

I still collect rocks. Can't help myself. I always try to pick up a couple of rocks from wherever it is we are. But NOT in Hawaii!!! You do not dare take one of the Goddess Pele's lava rocks!!!!!! Legend has it that doing so is VERY bad hoodoo...

[PasadenaTrudy]

43. I love them too!

The stores around me have closed, too, such a drag. I wanted to study geology in college, but my math and science skills were lagging. I still took basic geology and loved the field trips! I love driving around AZ and NM looking at the red rocks against the turquoise blue sky...sigh...I'm going again in Oct., staying by the Rio Grande. I'll be looking for rocks!

[Xipe Totec]

13. I can't top that. Ever. nt

[calimary]

14. SIGH....

WANT!

Utter magnificence! Those OPALS!!! Sigh...

[lovemydog]

18. They're all mind-glowingly beautiful.

I especially love the top one.

The bottom one looks like the insides of a rainbow computer.

[DFW]

24. SInce I was a kid, I've been fascinated by minerals. Here are a few I managed to collect:

I even collected them for a while when the Chinese started bringing them over to small fairs here in Europe and before they found out they could get 20 times as much as they were asking. The metallic-looking crystal is antimonite from China, and the pyrites are from one mine in Spain (Navajún) that produced the most perfectly formed cubes seen.

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[demmiblue]

27. Lol... that antimonite kind of reminds me of Superman's Fortress of Solitude (in metallic form)!

And, wow, those pyrite specimens are amazing.

Thanks for sharing!

[DFW]

31. Mother Nature shouldn't be underestimated as an artist

Quite creative when she wants to be!

[CrawlingChaos]

32. Those pyrite cubes are such a trip

Looks like you have some amazing specimens of precise intersecting cubes. I'm sure you never get tired of looking at them - they are so cool! And the antimonite is unbelievably gorgeous. The way you've displayed the silver and gold together is quite striking.

Yes there are amazing specimens coming out of China. For instance one of my favorite minerals is azurite (I can just get lost in that incredible ultra-blue) and I was used to seeing expensive pieces the size of a fingertip - and then at some point, these big amazing chunks from China started to become available at low prices. Not sure if that's still the case but it was certainly mind-blowing at first.

Some favorite pieces of mine I acquired on Ebay from people who just found them. For something like $10 a super-nice guy sent me a box of the most beautiful botryoidal druzy I've ever seen that he was finding somewhere near his home in the Smokey Mountains. It's so beautifully formed and it's outer later of fine crystals makes it looks like it's been dusted with some kind of magical sugar. It's crazy what I paid for it.

Thanks for sharing some of your collection - I enjoyed seeing it.

[DFW]

34. I wish I had time to play the ebay game

But I don't. Ironically, my brother, who knows little about minerals, does, and occasionally finds something. He just bought a wild malachite from some guy in India, something I never would have tried or expected. He just sent the money to India, and then got the piece in the mail from there, which is weird, as most malachite comes from the old Zaire.

The Chinese also have found some incredibly fine flourite. If I can figure out how to take a decent photo of some of them, I'll post them, too. Nowadays, they have gotten way too expensive, but 20 years ago, you could take your pick for little money.

The pyrite cubes all come from one mine outside Zaragoza, in Spain. Pyrite crystals come in many forms, depending on trace elements, but the cube is the "purest" form of crystal. Over 20 years ago, these things started showing up from people who had traveled there, and I just couldn't stop buying them. I couldn't believe nature had allowed these to form. Besides, with Pyrite being such a fragile, brittle mineral, extracting these things from any matrix had to be a delicate procedure at best, But the ones at the Navajún mine were extracted from a soft limestone base that apparently permitted getting the crystals out without damaging them. I've heard there hasn't been much coming out of there in the last 15 years, but the few specimens I was able to grab up cost me little, and each one is fascinating in its own right. Displayed together, I could just stare at them all afternoon.

[CrawlingChaos]

51. Yeah, it can be quite the time sucker

It's getting a bit better though. Once you do enough searches for what you want, it makes suggestions for you and I've gotten lucky that way a number of times. Takes patience though. And luck. I've been very lucky with overseas purchases.

Maybe I'll score a killer pyrite cute from Spain someday. Your pictures are making me want one!

[DFW]

54. Just remember the location

Navajún in Spain. If you search for pyrite and filter out those not from Spain, you might get lucky!

[calimary]

41. Oh MAAAAAAANNNNNN....

Pyrite! AMAZING!

Those antimonite "arrows" are just jaw-dropping! Where's my bib? Utterly drool-worthy, DFW!!!!

[panader0]

33. Beautiful! I kinda like malachite--a poor man's turquoise--looks great with silver for Southwestern

jewelry.

[trueblue2007]

35. wow, just beautiful

[Sheldon Cooper]

36. They're rocks, Hank.

[DFW]

37. Here are two more pics

Last edited Tue May 5, 2015, 10:05 AM - Edit history (1)

This a quartz crystal from Brazil with crystals of rutile, a titanium ore running through it:
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

And here is a closeup of some other pyrites from Navajún:
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[calimary]

42. That's one spectacular rutilated quartz crystal, DFW!

How large is it?

Shit. I could look at this stuff ALL DAY...

Is that a tourmaline crystal behind the pyrites in the second photo? YYYYUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!

[DFW]

44. Quite the minerologist yourself, I see

The rutilated quartz is about 13 inches long and around 5½ inches wide. It is VERY heavy!


Yes, that is a green tourmaline you saw. It was an incredible stroke of luck for me. It is about a foot long, and something like that today probably costs more than a new car. What happened was that there was a mineral shop in Provincetown on Cape Cod, and I occasionally looked in there to see if there was anything I wanted for my collection. I had seen this tourmaline crystal in his street window for about ten years in a row, and had just assumed it was a black tourmaline. The way he had his display lit up, the light went right over it, and no color was visible at all.

Then one day, I was walking past his shop in the late afternoon, and the sun's rays caught the crystal just right, and I freaked. I saw that all these years I had assumed it was a black tourmaline, I had been wrong. So, apparently, had everyone else. He remarked that I was the first one in over ten years to even ask to look at it. He asked if I wanted it for its "crystal energy," and I drew a blank. That whole movement had passed me completely by, and I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained to me what "Healy Feelies" were, and I said, no, I just collected minerals.

He then told me he had bought the piece ages ago on a trip to Minas Gerais, Brazil, thinking someone would want it in the States, but no one had ever asked to look at it. I said nothing, but thought to myself, "well, my man, if you display it in such a manner that every single potential collector thinks it's a black tourmaline, of COURSE no one will ask to see it." Just to get his money out of it, he asked me a token 7% over his cost, which must have been some 10+ years prior, which makes it about 25 years ago now. I jumped at the chance, knowing I'd never again get a chance at a foot-long green tourmaline crystal that wasn't in the tens of thousands.

Some day, I need to do a good photo series on the Chinese flourites that good old Wang Guo brought me over the years. Like cubed water!

[calimary]

49. J.E.A.L.O.U.S.!!!!!

Sounds scrumptious!

I'd have grabbed it, too, at that price! Or, certainly, I'd have wanted to!

I still remember the first fossil I ever fell in love with. I think I was four years old. We'd moved into a new house and up the back of the back yard, where the property line ended at the top of a hill were these very rough-hewn stone steps. In one of the steps near the top was one step that had this STRIKING fossil in it. It looked like a butt. I swear! It looked like some elf or fairy or sprite lived inside the rock but had stuck his butt up through the top of the rock, so the butt cheeks stuck out! Two nearly perfect little round attached orbs - side-by-side in one configuration. I have NO idea what it was. No clue what creature caused it. I do remember finding teeny tiny shells in the dirt, too. That might suggest that the area might have been underwater long, long ago. We moved from there when I was just a few years older so all I have of it are early childhood memories. But I clearly remember rubbing my finger around and around over the two "butt cheeks," circling their shape, tracing up to the highest points of the two hemispheres, and spiraling back around and down to where the "cheeks" fused into the flat surface of the rest of the rock. I haven't the faintest idea what it might have been. I've never seen anything like it before or since. Had to be about three inches by two inches in size. And I SWEAR - it looked like some itty bitty person's butt sticking up through the rock! How can one ever forget that?

My grandmother had three fossilized trilobites on a side table with other gewgaws on display in her living room. I was transfixed. Played with them every time I went over there to visit. Just couldn't stop gazing at them and tracing the lines on them. Always hoped, in vain, that she might give me one (or at least let me co-mother it)!

[DFW]

53. They found a huge colony of fossilized trilobites in Morocco's Atlas Mountains

The Moroccans used to bring them in huge quantity to German rock shows and sell them for between €5 and €15. I bought a few of them. I have no idea what they cost today, but there so many of them, I can't imagine they would cost a lot more today.

[PasadenaTrudy]

38. First image to pop into my mind, too

"Dammit, Marie!"

[Manifestor_of_Light]

48. There are many beautiful minerals.

Unfortunately, most of them are too soft to be worn as a gemstone.

When I took the Diamond Grading course of GIA, the guy who was teaching it brought his collection of mineral specimens with him. He said "Oh this is blahdeblah-ite. It's too soft to wear." He was a real gemology fanatic and made it a lot of fun.

We learned that diamond is cubic, but not the specific type of crystal. It's not face centered, it's not edge centered. I thought cubic minerals looked like cubes, like table salt and pyrite. Diamonds come in crystals that look like two pyramids stuck together base to base.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

52. Boulder opal is very pretty and unusual.

I know a wholesaler who sells boulder opal beads. They are chocolate brown with veins of opal in them.

[PasadenaTrudy]

55. Wow. Looks like

some kind of chocolate dessert from another galaxy