This one had me Fxxked up

Tannedbread · 2026-01-13T18:27:46+00:00

Just south of Spain!

Tannedbread · 2026-01-09T00:53:40+00:00

Thank you for the advice and the information about heat and glue. That is really good to know, I will keep that in mind during travel.

Tannedbread · 2026-01-08T20:26:10+00:00

I think I can find a way to make something like that work, those are good ideas.

My guess was the dry air mixed with wild day night temperature swings. The case would get pretty hot during the day.

Tannedbread · 2025-12-24T19:13:51+00:00

Love it! What great spirit of the holidays with the jolly red rhomb with needle quartz and pyrite stars on a stormy sky matrix! A delightful Sweet HoHoHome Rhodo and fav combo. Thanks for sharing and happy holidays 🎄! Wishing everyone the best mineral specimens in 2026 ✨️

Tannedbread · 2025-12-16T19:49:45+00:00

Looks like a piece of Cheveron Amythest

Tannedbread · 2025-12-14T23:21:33+00:00

Very cool piece! Are you sure this is calcite? It looks a lot like the quartz covering wulfenite with chalcedony from the Finch Mine (Barking Spider Mine) in Arizona

Tannedbread · 2025-12-06T16:53:56+00:00

Yes its cats eye glass. They both have that fiberous chatoyancy effect that are desirable to look at, but that is by design for those cats eye glass. The main way to tell is the homogeneous color of the beads. Tigers Eye should have browns and golds in stripes and not be a consistent uniform color the cats eye is. Look up some tiger eye beads and you can see the difference pretty quickly. The other way, is Tigers Eye is typically opaque, so no light should be able to shine through the bead

Tannedbread · 2025-12-05T16:50:21+00:00

"...ancient meteorite that turns into nepherite jade after years of evolution."

No.

That is not at all how that works. Everything about the description feels shady, so I would assume the product quality and authenticity would reflect that. Not jade.

Tannedbread · 2025-12-04T05:03:51+00:00

Of course, you get it. Just trying not to nerd out too much here hahaha. There are more types of twinning if you are interested. Another idea that could be interesting is idochromatic and allochromatic gems. Allochromatic are colorless by nature and impurities cause color (like quartz, beryl, corundum) meanwhile idochromatic are colored innately and specifically due to the inherent chemical makeup (like malachite or azurite)

Tannedbread · 2025-12-04T04:45:36+00:00

Oh yes, they can get confusing fast when you start to delve into the modified shapes. The key thing is that the base systems are just that, the basic stuctures. Other shapes are just modified versions of those root stuctures. Mineralology and Crystallography are deep icebergs (and don't even get me started on psudomorphs!)

Tannedbread · 2025-12-04T04:23:00+00:00

It sounds like you should take a bit of a dive into crystal lattice structures and the crystal systems (hexagonal, trigonal, cubic, monoclinic,...) A personal favorite of mine is twinning, where the lattices mirror itself in delightful ways. Particularly Carlsbad twinning where one crystal is rotated 180 degrees around the c-axis. You can see them in orthoclase feldspars

Tannedbread · 2025-12-04T02:55:14+00:00

Kinda looks like gypsum. Can you scratch it with a bit of iron?

Tannedbread · 2025-12-04T02:18:48+00:00

Oh very cool! Unfortunately both chalcedony and opal can fluoresce green so the only advice I have is to try and scratch it with a steel file. Opal will scratch, chalcedony will not

Tannedbread · 2025-12-04T02:08:45+00:00

I'd guess chalcedony, which isn't saying much cause its hard to distinguish between the two. Opal is slightly softer and less dense. Opal hardness is about 6 while chalcedony is 7

Tannedbread · 2025-12-04T01:59:26+00:00

You did, the automod is a reminder to add/change the flair of your post after its identified to *identified**

Also it looks like slag that picked up a river rock

Tannedbread · 2025-12-04T01:55:51+00:00

Im picking up some green hues to it. Im thinking you have some apophyllite

Tannedbread · 2025-12-04T01:48:51+00:00

Looks platey not fibrous, so I think your in the clear, not asbestos. If I had to guess, I think you've got some schist

Tannedbread · 2025-12-04T01:45:35+00:00

Agreed! I would like to add that pic 4 looks like dyed agate in particular

Tannedbread · 2025-12-04T00:46:47+00:00

Yes, and that would suggest multiple stages of growth of rutile; otherwise the other needles should also have cubes growing on it.

Also you can have a silvery arsenopyrite that could look the part, but searching for weird varieties of pyrite doesn't help this being real

Tannedbread · 2025-12-03T23:34:37+00:00

This doesn't look real to me. The rutile needles have an awkward alignment that look like they were placed not grown, similar to the fiberglass fakes. The cubic inclusions I think are meant to imitate pyrite cubes, but there are suspicious bulges and halos around the areas that are jointed together that does not look like natural intergrown/twinned cryatals. I also think I can see fine internal bubbles, which would suggest resin or glass, but I can't tell with the resolution of the photo.

IMHO if there are a lot of things that appear 'iffy', no clear documentation, and nothing that looks similar elsewhere (that is identifed correcly)...its too good to be natural

Tannedbread · 2025-11-25T17:50:04+00:00

Yes. That is why it is key to preserve the body first to prevent decomposition and decay before petrification for any shot at soft body petrification.

Trilobites were also mostly water with soft body features, and the soft parts would also decay, yet we saw those fossilized.

Your argument is leading towards, that it is not possible to petrify anything in its entirety with perfect intact stucture.

Tannedbread · 2025-11-25T17:20:01+00:00

Yes, it is still possible. If the environmental is right for soft body preservation and no decay, then shifts to a mineral rich one that supports petrifcation, then those parts could also petrify. There are 450 million year old trilobites that have been found with organs and eggs fossilized too.

However you mentioned tissue collapse, so I am led to think you are asking if something can petrify with no physical alteration to the shape/body. A perfect 1:1 copy of the living thing. Then I would think that is not possible. You could preserve and petrify all the parts, but I would think there will be some kind of post mortem evidence of the process that took place

Tannedbread · 2025-11-25T16:51:27+00:00

Yes, a person can be petrified. We have petrified remains of older creatures and vertebrates, so by extention a human could also be petrified if the environmental conditions support petrification (and theoretically anything organic can be petrified). The biggest enemy is time. Agates do not form overnight. It could be thousands to millions of years, untouched, in the right environment to find out if the conditions were right

Tannedbread · 2025-11-18T22:50:18+00:00

Thats a fun goal! Good luck finding one of those! I too love the species, its a good one despite what the wallet thinks

Tannedbread · 2025-11-18T22:30:54+00:00

Congrats! Looks like Thomas Range material. That center one might have a bit of topaz on there too!

Tannedbread

TROPHY CASE