Fake Crystals - How to test your Quartz

Fake Crystals - How to test your Quartz

Ever hear about all the fake crystals out there? There are lab-created quartz, dies, heat treated, aura treated crystals and then there are outright fakes make from glass or resin. You might of heard of smelt quartz, a melted quartz infused with other materials which ends up diffusing it so much that is becomes glass. There are MANY fakes out there but that doesn't mean that yours is. So lets dive in and find out 5 tests to weed out the fakes from the real stuff.

There are 5 'tests' you can observe.

1- The first and most reliable test is a scratch test. Glass is softer on the Moe's scale so any quartz will be able to easily scratch and make a mark on a glass crystal. If you scratch a quartz piece with a quartz point it will be difficult to scratch and if you manage to make a mark it will be very faint. This is a very solid way to find out if your quartz is fake or not. But, to ease your mind there are other tests you can do to really make you feel at ease.

2- Now some Fakes will be made of resin. If so, resin is easy to spot. It will burn and smell of plastic when put to a flame. We call this the burn test. If it's glass or quartz it will leave a dark smudge mark on the crystal that can be wiped off. Resin will smell awful and it's shape will eventually warp and melt.

3- Sound tests! Glass has a high pitched sound when hit with a piece of quartz. Quartz on the other hand will sound more like a 'thump' and sound a little bit electric. It's hard to describe- try it and you will know what we mean. But don't knock it too hard, you don't want to chip your beautiful crystal.

4- Conduct a temperature test. If you touch glass it should feel like room temperature, maybe a touch cooler. Real quartz or any crystal should feel cold at the touch.

5- And finally, look for bubbles! Now real quartz can seemingly have bubbles but if looked under a loop it will be an etching- not a real bubble. There are enhydros filled with gas and liquid but these will appear slightly different than your glass bubbles. While this test is not as reliable as the others it is an easy red flag to notice. If you see a bubble do the other tests mentioned here, especially the scratch test and that should give you a final say on whether your crystal is real or fake.

We'll leave you with one last tidbit of info: We performed our test on a garden quartz and we were able to verify that our quartz is real HOWEVER, most garden quartz spheres with a clear division of pyrite matrix is a MAN-MADE crystal collage- the two real crystals are glued together and then polished. So beware when buying garden quartz spheres.

Watch our video below for hands-on demonstrations on how to look for a fake quartz crystals.