Agate Stone

We offer our clients an excellent quality range of Sunflower Agate Gemstone, chalcedony quartz that forms in concentric layers in a wide variety of colors and textures. Each individual agate forms by filling a cavity in host rock. As a result, Sunflower Agate Gemstone is often found as a round nodule, with concentric bands like the rings of a tree trunk.

Features:

• High quality
• Market leading prices
• Various sizes

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Rock Lore & Tidbits: George Swanson discovered blue lace agate on his farm, Ysterputs Farm, in Namibia, which was called South West Africa at the time. He coined the term “Gem of Ecology” for it because of the swirling blues and whites which resemble clouds above the Earth (the fragile blue marble) as seen from space. The best blue lace agate in the world still comes from the narrow seam on George's farm

Blue Lace is one of the most prized agates and has been hard to find lately. The best Blue Lace Agate comes from Namibia and we were lucky to be able to pick up an ample supply of Namibian Blue Lace Agate.
Agate is a form of microcrystaline quartz. It is usually formed in nodules and has transparent, or translucent portions. As with all of the other species in the quartz family, agate takes a high polish with cerium oxide, but also takes a fine polish with tin oxide

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Boulder opal is found in Australia where precious opal forms in veins and patches within brown ironstone boulders. When the opal is mixed through the ironstone it is called matrix opal. Hardness ranges between 5.5 and 6 on the Mohs scale.
Boulder opal is very durable due to the ironstone backing the opal forms on. Because water content within the opal is very low it almost never cracks or crazes as it ages.

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Miner of brecciated mookaite.
This is another new find from the outback of Western Australia.
It occurs near the Kennedy Ranges about 100 miles inland from the coastal town of Carnarvon.
This geologically interesting rock is actually a brecciated radiolarite.
The red cementing matrix does not undercut & takes a glassy polish

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This conglomerate consists of innumerable fragments and pebbles of assorted rock types but predominantly jasper, quartz and chert.

It occurs in the Pinyalling Hills which are located in the midwest region of Western Australia, approximately 200 miles north of Perth

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Fire Agate is a layered stone. The layers are small enough that light entering them forms interference colors known as “fire”. The gem is thought to be formed when hot water saturated with colloidal silica and iron oxide invades cavities in country rock and begin to cool. Chalcedony with iron oxide begins to grow on any available surface (the iron oxide gives the basic brown color to the gem). As the solutions began to precipitate and grow layers of silica and iron oxide would be deposited depending on the relative level of those elements in solution and underlying conditions. These alternating silica and iron oxide layers (Schiller layers) cause the brilliant fire in the gem. As iron oxide ran out in the solution colorless chalcedony continued to grow.

Many of these gems are found in the land between Kingman, Arizona and Needles, California, and around theColorado River. Fire Agate has also been found in quantity in some areas of Mexico.

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Plume agate has fluffy inclusions which often appear to be soft and have depth. Sometimes plume agate inclusions resemble feathers, plants, or flowers. Colors may vary as in sagenite.

Plume is surprisingly more common than most of us might believe.

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Turritella Agate: Some 40-60 million years ago, an ancient saltwater sea covered what is now Wyoming. A snail of the Turritella species lived in its shallow waters. The shell of this snail is a small, long, tapering spire with numerous whorls. Today, fossil remains of the Turritella shell are found on the edges of Delaney Rim in south central Wyoming. The shell material has been completely replaced by agate and chalcedony. Agate and chalcedony are names given to a microscopically crystallized variety of quartz – the main component of which is silica. The Turritella agate may be tumbled and polished for weeks to give it.

Turritella agate is from Wyoming. The proper name is Goniobasis, (pronounced gone-e-o-basis). The agatized fossil rough was misnamed many years ago, but the name turritella is still commonly used. The petrified agate or fossilized snails of turritella agate are colored ambered, golds or bluish in a gray black to dark brown matrix with the size of the fossil spiral snails up to 1 1/2″ long. Size of the rough are from 1-15 pounds each. There may be some waste in this Eocene era (38-58 million years old) agate with areas not highly agatized. Slab turritella agate parallel with the flat lay of the snails to take advantage of the interesting shapes of these ancient gastropods that have been preserved by silica replacement. See turritella agate slabs for a slab sample. Turritella agate will make some very nice cabochons or tumble broken slabs or rough for unique tumbled stones.

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