UPDATED MINERAL COLLECTION, TAKE 2
So I lost the first post of this, and the lighting was really not great beforehand anyway, due to the clouds covering the sunlight every time I tried to take pictures. But then, later, there was a perfect little block of sunlight on my patio, so I retook the most egregious color losses, but my phone doesn’t handle bright lighting terribly well either (cheap go phone camera). So some stuff just doesn’t look too great on the camera (I didn’t even bother posting the rough garnets between the Kyanite and Chrysocolla, because I can’t get them to look good.)
In regards to the volume of this, this coffee table is almost three feet across the long diameter.
FLUORITE (and my cat):
The Fluorite is the cubed crystals and the polished slab in purple. This mineral is actually where we get the word fluorescent, due to fluorite’s trait of refracting longwave UV in a way that makes it appear to glow in the visible spectrum. However, the glow immediately ceases as soon as you remove the radiation.
AMBER
This is a lower grade amber, meaning it’s generally not fit for jewelry (hence my ability to acquire so much of it with little effort), and it’s called black amber, but it actually comes with a variety of colors, from black, to wine red, to almost gold. Fun fact, real amber will almost always float in a saline solution.
AVENTURINE AND BRECCIATED JASPER:
The Aventurine is the green, quartz-based mineral, and the jasper is the red, almost marble-looking one. (Sorry, I’m running out of steam in regards to information after losing the last post)
BLACK TOURMALINE:
This doesn’t look like much at a glance, I understand, and due to black tourmaline’s usual opacity, and then this rough pile’s inclusions and matrix, I can understand questioning if it is even a crystal at all.
However, examining its column structure and shape compared to a gem-grade tourmaline reveals the relationship.
KYANITE:
CHRYSOCOLLA
The chrysocolla is the rougher looking rocks behind the boxes, starting with the brilliantly blue specimen
VARISCITE
MALACHITE:
For those of you that have only ever heard of malachite as the material for glass armor in Elder Scrolls, here’s what it looks like in real life. You might note that it is neither a glass, nor is it an appropriate material for armor, unless your goal is to die a shattery death.
CHALCOPYRITE
This is a particularly oxidized sample, and most of it leaned more toward the indigo and violet, rather than the vibrant aqua like what I was hoping (although there are still a few splashes of the aqua and the original golden copper color). Chalcopyrite is the copper-based version of Iron pyrite, or fool’s gold.
LEPIDOLITE
Lepidolite is super fragile, due to it being made of thin sheets of crystal. This is also what contributes the pearlescent shine. The wider ribbon may not have the best color, but it does best illustrate the shape.
SELENITE:
Then we have some gorgeous selenite. I love how shimmery this stuff is. Apparently, due to its extremely long columns and clean cleavage, it used to be used as really fancy window panes.
BARITE:
I’m not going to lie, I know almost nothing about this mineral, other than it being barium based. I just thought it looked cool.
ROUGH EMERALD (in matrix)
The specific specimen that I’m holding up is probably my favorite, because the matrix crystal is all fibrous and such a great contrast against the emerald.
GABBRO (blue crystalline)
This is just basic gabbro that has some kind of blue mineral as its inclusions, instead of the usual mica. I don’t actually know what the mineral is yet, though.
CITRINE and TOPAZ
And now we get to the shiny shinies. The citrine is just a golden variant of quartz, and the topaz is the cut blue gem to the right.
There are also Zircon, amethyst, and apatite, but we’ll get there.
BISMUTH
Coolest metallic crystal ever.
RUBY and ZIRCON (and little babby polished sodalite)
The rough rubies my sister dubbed “the red raisins”. Rubies are just a red variant of the sapphire family, and the only one besides emery to be given a different mineral name, instead of just a color-prefixed sapphire. White zircon is frequently used as an inexpensive diamond substitute, but it comes in a broad array of colors. Mine are mostly green, but some golden and white are in thre.
IOLITE and GARNET
First, the garnets: these are matching cut Rhodolite, which is a variant of Pyrope leaning more toward the violet spectrum. There are actually 7 different minerals referred to as garnet, each one having a different set of traits, but the same general crystal shape. There can also be green garnets, but those are usually found in the soul-freezing mines of Russia.
For the Iolite: Iolite might actually be my second favorite stone, besides emerald. It has a trait called pleochroism, which means that it refracts and refocuses light differently depending on what angle the crystal is placed at. Because of this, it can look indigo at one angle (its “default” color), and almost gold at another.
AMETHYST and APATITE
So you get another look at the zircon here, but also the amethyst, which is a mix of rough and cut, and the better part of a parcel of green and blue apatite, which has some gorgeous color and clarity, although its durability leaves a little to be desired.
TANZANITE:
This isn’t really gem grade tanzanite (god knows I couldn’t afford a piece this large if it was), but it’s still a very pretty specimen with good clarity, but the crystals are very small and the color not particularly intense like what most markets would want. Also, this usually looks more blue than purple, so now I need to look up if it’s a camera goofup on my phone’s part, or if tanzanite has a UV reaction. (there’s also some lapis lazuli hiding in the corner that I forgot to take a picture of, oops.)
OPALS
I just really like opals. And they photograph way better in the sun, although a few weren’t really in a good position to photograph the fire.
Not specifically mentioned with closeups:
parcel of gem-grade, but rough emeralds
rough garnets
3 quartz points
Parcel of smokey quartz
Rose quartz beads
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