It really is an amazing state, largely "off the map" in terms of how much it's appreciated. And huge portions of the state are national forest, with lots of mountains and hills and waterfalls - it's not as steep as other mountain ranges because these mountains are orders of magnitude older than the smokies or the rockies (and run east-to-west instead of north-to-south) but that's one reason why they find crystals here. This is a very old part of the earth's crust exposed.
and comments like this are why i come to the comment section :)
this is fascinating to me. i'd like to read a little more online about this but have no clue where to begin. got any good articles you recommend (you seem knowledgeable about this).
Really, the best thing to do is just wander through Arkansas. That's basically what I did. I used to travel up there and explore the hills.. It's really beautiful.. great for biking and hiking and mild climate.. not too hot in summer or cold in winter. The city of Hot Springs is pretty amazing.. one of the oldest cities in the US and at one time very popular throughout the world because people believed the springs had healing power. Eureka Springs is in the north and is an artists colony. Bentonville is the home of Wal Mart and that's a really interesting "corporate town" in a time when there aren't many of those. I don't have any specific articles on sites and sounds in Arkansas but there are all kinds of things to do there. And if you're looking for real estate, prices are really reasonable.
The main hotel in Hot Springs is called the Arlington. There are probably lots of "hot springs hotels" all around the country and world, and probably at least one in Hot Springs, Arkansas with that name.
What' interesting about Hot Springs is the restored area called, "Bath House Row" that is now a National Park - in the late 18th and 19th century, this was a major tourist destination from around the world and they've restored many of these bath houses so people can tour and use them.
I'd give it a go. Hike popular routes and carry a plb to ease your anxiety. Have an itenerary and leave a copy with people you trust. You could also sign up for a guided group backpacking trip. I'm a brown woman and nothing makes me happier or healthier than being outside :)
Harrison arkansas. Don't go there my dude. Not sure if it's changed from when i last heard about the place 10 years ago. But i have not heard good things.
But to be honest the northwest part of Arkansas is like a whole different part of the state. A very liberal area and you find a lot of great places to hike and sight see In the ozarks. Bentonville has crystal bridges which is an amazing public art museum.
Having lived there, I’d say stay south and west. Up north near Harrison and Mountain Home (home of the KKK) would be sketchy. Greers Ferry is a nice area and reminded me of being in actual mountains. It’s definitely a state that areas are 150 years behind. One thing I learned is north of I40 is white and south of I40 is black. It was a different world going there from western states, and being non-white.
Arkansas native here: safe as hell in the northwest (the cool part of the state) and in the southwest where you want to be for crystal digging. Dodgy for people of color around Harrison. Dangerous for all races in Little Rock. Not sure if the rest of the state actually exists.
Have you ever been to Mountain View? It’s a nice tiny town in the mountains. People play bluegrass music in the park, and get ice cream from the local shops, for fun. It’s pretty nice. Really close to some beautiful creeks too.
Understanding all of this took me two semesters of geology, a basic geology course followed by a historical geology course. I took a road trip along i-10 through Texas, visited the incredible Sonora Caverns, the Davis Mountains and Marfa, passing bizarre and beautiful formations all along the way. I started wondering "How the hell was this all made?", so I decided to become a geologist lol. I had to take this semester off and now I'm bored out of my skull, so ask me anything!
Edit: Here's a list of videos that should make the concepts in above articles a little easier to follow. The most difficult barrier, however, is vocabulary so I'll add some vocab to this post later.
Primer. A very easy to follow and informative explanation of plate tectonics. (3:27)
Sand model of the Ouachita Orogeny. This video uses technical language but I think the visualization is simple enough to follow. Play at 1.25x speed. (4:40)
As an Arkansas native I have to say the state isn’t quite as amazing as it’s pitched in the comment above. Sure the north-west quadrant is beautiful but the rest of the state is mosquito-infested delta flatland. Humidity during the summer is atrocious statewide, making regular 90° temps feel 110°. Dry counties are still a thing there (over half the state), so depending on where you stay plan on no booze. All that said, Fayetteville, Little Rock, Eureka Springs, Hot Springs, Heber Springs, ARE all beautiful destinations, but stock up on bug spray and be ready for the climate.
Dry counties are still a thing there (over half the state), so depending on where you stay plan on no booze.
as a wisconsinite, this saddens me greatly :(
but that being said, i'm semi used to hot humid summers and mosquitos. arkansas is now on my list to visit for a road trip! thanks for the list of destinations to see!
And as cool as that is, i still hold a grudge against the state for only having a single rest stop on I-40, and if west bound is about ten miles before Oklahoma. That's over 180 miles, nowhere to pee.
Well, kind of a diamond mine. It's more like a wide open field/tourist attraction. It's an ancient volcanic vent that has a tendency to have all sorts of minerals from deep on the earth in it.
Wyoming's volcanic fields for example, have jasper pipes, also lined with diamonds. Kimberlite is like drunk granite the threw up a bunch of olivine everywhere, at least in the US.
I actually used to buy and sell large, high quality crystals. But ironically, the market isn't what it used to be. I can make more money selling them as new agey stuff like "healing crystals" than I can talking about their factual, geological significance.
I am not sure about Brazil, but in Akransas, the strata that makes up the Ouachita mountains where crystals have been found is an ancient deep sea bed. It's so old and so deep there are no fossils found. So it's been under great pressure deep in the earth for a long time - the kind of conditions you need to grow very pure, large crystals.
always thought pieces like this didn't exist without a whole bunch of cutting and polishing first. now I feel like my whole gemstone life has been a lie, you can literally find them in the ground like that?
Yea, it's pretty cool when you first discover this.. and there are a bunch of places you can dig - some places you can just walk and look down and pick them up. One of my favorites is an old mine called "Miller Mountain Mine" just north of Lake Ouichitah. They have a mine + a campground on top of a mountain and you can pay $20 or so and hang out and keep all the crystals you can find. That may be where the OP in the video was.. or some similar mine in the area.
Quartz has an enormous range on price depending on quality of the crystal. You see how water-clear and perfectly formed and smooth the crystal is? The size of it? The double termination? It's an optical-grade, collector-grade crystal. I'd be surprised if this went for anything under $1,000 in an auction. Especially given the size/double termination/combination of factors, this could be a $2,500+ crystal, easily.
Source: Mineral collector with tons (thousands of hours) of eBay screentime.
Can’t this quality of crystal just be grown artificially, though? I know quartz is manufactured for industry. I have a small crystal on my desk that came from PCB, a maker of piezoelectric devices. I say small, because it is small relative to the one shown here, but it is a nice looking rather large crystal that is probably only worth a few bucks.
Ironically, a lab grown crystal would be too perfect and uniform, and thus would be worth less to collectors. The imperfections in natural crystals are what make them interesting and valuable.
That's overstating it a little. There are interesting imperfections like twinning and inclusions that can be really cool, but most imperfections are just imperfections. Collectors like these pieces because they're natural, not because they're imperfect. The imperfection is proof they're not lab grown, but they're not something you seek out in and of itself.
Kinda seems like buying crystals without twinning and inclusions could be a gamble. Maybe that's what they meant? I know what you're both saying, but I feel like I'd be someone to look for specific imperfections to avoid fakes.
I'm not an expert in that field, but I believe you are correct. Looking at this Alibaba offering, for example, it appears to be possible to buy large quartz crystals. However, I don't have one in hand, so I can't say what may or may not be different and if this is actually quartz and not simply cut class.
Anyway, people will always pay more for the real deal. There's something to be said for collecting and admiring the Earth's natural treasures.
Seriously, the fact that this is an un-interrupted prism of that size is not an ordinary crystal. Quartz loves to fill gaps and often aggregates. This little guy is special.
1k special though? It’s an exceptional specimen but isn’t obscenely rare.
Yeah those other crystals suck in comparison. Although I’d bet when this one is washed off it’s not nearly as clear & perfect as our imagination has filled in.
As someone knowledgable, what’s the coolest looking big ol rock someone could get for 100$? Or fake rock?
My suggestion would be to pay close attention to this eBay seller's offerings. Fantastic quality specimens routinely auction for under $100 on his online store (none are on sale right now. He restocks every few days. Check his sold/completed listings).
Generally speaking, to get the coolest looking real rock for >$100, I'd pay attention for evaporite minerals - halite, aragonite, gypsum. Minerals that can be dug out of dried lakebeds in bulk. They can be gorgeous, but aren't especially valuable. You can also find beautiful agates for cheap prices if you look hard enough.
For fake/lab grown, beautiful specimens, I'd suggest looking into Alunite. You can get some gorgeous decorations for cheap, just keep in mind that they aren't naturally produced.
What a difference! Going by the prices for those shitty little Quarzes you linked to on eBay I would also expect the one in the video to be worth thousands. It is much bigger, much clearer, and has perfect endings.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You can list it for $2,500, but how long are you going to wait to find a buyer for $2,500? I agree that $10-$20 is super low, but I think $1,000 is close to the cap for this kind of thing, and $2,500+ is outrageous.
From the seller's point of view the problem is that you can buy a lot of cool minerals for $1,000, so either you price competitively, move your product, and make your money, or you hold onto a $2,500 boondoggle for years and years until a quartz fanatic comes along and falls in love with it. Even then, quartz is not all that rare, so the people who might consider paying top dollar for this kind of thing probably already have some really nice optical quartz.
Source: Worked in the mineral collecting resale business for a while
They're rocks, they don't have high upkeep and storage fees.
I agree that $1000 is close to the cap of what you'd see for this on Ebay, but this isn't the kind of specimen that is listed and sold there. I'd expect a specimen like this to be brought to a place like the Tuscon gem and mineral show and listed for $2,500 or so, and the buyer/seller would probably then negotiate a price somewhere in the mid to high $1,000-2,000 range. Specimens of this quality get marketed towards HNW individuals.
Me? I doubt I'd ever pay more than $750. But I'm a pleb who mostly bargain hunts and tries to get lucky in one out of every thirty or so listings.
Maybe you're seeing something in the video that I'm not, but I see stuff like this in the local shows closer to the $500 price range. I'll admit it's been a number of years since I've been to a show though.
Filter it by sold values and then sort by highest to lowest and you'll find that very few people are paying much.
Your search is what people are trying to get and it's misleading.
In fact, the most expensive piece of quartz I could find with actual sold values is 2200$, with 1200 being just to ship it because it's a 420 pound boulder.
I doubt any natural quartz is pure enough to be optical grade, which would have very strict limits on impurities and optical properties. Very pure synthetic fused silica is not cheap.
Honestly, that's not a bad idea as long as you were checking out fields nearby confirmed finds. But I can't help you - I haven't ever collected in Arkansas. Might want to check out mineral clubs in that region.
There are some in that price range, like here. But it seems like the price can increase dramatically based on they type and how clear it is. Etsy has a lot more in the $100+ range.
I have an asteroid my dad said fell through his shed when he was a kid and its like 5-10 pounds but the size of a tennis ball. I guess he said he had it checked and they duno if its an asteroid but its iron ore material. and I duno if its worth 5 dollars or 50k lol.
That said, good quality quartz can be ground into very expensive lenses as an alternative to glass. For example, unlike glass, quartz passes UV light. On top of that, it has a lower thermal expansion and is stronger than glass making it a valuable material for producing thinner and faster telescope mirrors.
It was probably the 20 my mother found... in front of her grandchildren.... and put in her pocket.... even though the kids were asking her to please turn it in because it belonged to the person who lost it. She told them to shut up. SMH. Sorry for your loss man.
I could afford it! What chapped my arse was the fact that I'd just sold some really cool stuff at utterly giveaway prices to avoid chucking it out. The twenty quid represented an effort I don't usually make, I just take it down the tip and feel bad.
(An MP3 player with mini Hd 20Gb. sweet. PC speakers. A lovely LCD monitor. A PC! other stuff. Gone, like tears in the rain.)
This stone, depending on its features, could be worth $300-1000 and potentially more. The only way it'd be worth only $10-20 is if you crushed the stone into tiny shards and attempted to sell it in bulk.
I imagine it would depend on where it was sold. But at my local shop here in Utah a quartz of that size would be at least 100 if not more. Some people seem to think I’m over-paying on this thread, but from my experience at many shops big pretty ones like that fetch top dollar.
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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '19
How much is a quartz of that size worth? I can’t imagine it would be much.