Hearts

Small Hearts, Jewelry size

I think we have sold more of these than any other single item we have at Jewel Tunnel. The reason for this I think is that they are inexpensive and are for the most part real honest stones. At least we try and keep them honest in that we prefer a minimum of diddling and dying. In some cases we are not exactly sure what these hearts are exactly. The rough that these hearts are made from are from all over the world and are made for us by various lapidary factories in China. In some cases we are pretty certain where the rough is from, but in other cases, it could be from several countries. Example: Rose Quartz could be from Brazil, Madagascar or from several other countries. Some of the agate hearts we have are dyed, or at least we are pretty sure they are dyed. Unfortunately there are no easy or standard tests to determine if they are dyed. Even the main gemological laboratories do not have standard tests for this, saying that there is little demand for these tests. Usually it is best to assume that if the agate appears to be of a strange color like blue, green, neon pink, black (onyx) etc that it is dyed. Some people say that they can tell by looking at an agate if it is dyed or not. In many cases I think that you can be fairly certain that it is natural or fairly certain that it is dyed, but you really don’t know for sure in sometimes.

In some cases neither we nor our suppliers know what stones the hearts are made from. We got in some samples of a stone they called internet stone. Other examples are Dalmatian (it has spots like a Dalmatian dog) stone and spinach stone (it has little green stringy stuff in it that some might say looks a little bit like cooked spinach.) To properly know for sure exactly what these stones are, thin sections of them would have to be prepared and then analyzed by someone who knew petrology with a petrographic microscope to determine what minerals were present in the stone. From that analysis, if further more detailed analysis were not needed, a scientific description of the stone/rock could be given. However, this name might be rather complex and not easy to remember like garnetiferous granadiorite. So probably names like Dalmatian stone or Spinach stone might be better after all.

Hearts, 25x28mm
$1 each (We may have to raise the price on some of these shortly0
Here is a list of the various minerals and stones that we have hearts made from:

Carnelian