Finding genuine, well-formed specimens of the rarer minerals takes knowing where to look. These are the marketplaces and dealers I trust — from bargain hunting to museum-grade pieces — plus a search trick for the hard-to-find, and how to identify a mystery crystal for certain.
For the widest selection and the best chance of finding a specific mineral, start with these four. Between them they cover live auctions, fixed-price dealer stock and a search engine that scans dozens of mineral shops at once.
If the mineral you want isn't on any of the sites above, fall back to Google Image search. Copy the line below (click the box or the Copy button), paste it into Google Images, and replace NAME with what you're after. The string strips out the encyclopaedias and databases (mindat, RRUFF, Wikimedia…) so what's left is mostly dealers who actually have a piece for sale.
NAME -e-rocks -pinterest -mineralienatlas -tsumeb.com -mineralatlas -webmineral.com -mineral-analysis -researchgate -mindat -wikimedia -rruff
For the most powerful permanently programmed crystals on the market — energy locked into the stone so it broadcasts continuously, without ever needing to be re-charged or re-set.
Visit the EoE website →If you want to know for certain what a specimen is, use XRD (X-ray diffraction) — the definitive test. It needs about 1 gram of crystal powder and costs roughly €250 per test.
Prof. Dr. Johan De Grave & Dr. Dimitri Vandenberghe
+32 (0) 495 162 173 / +32 (0) 9 264 45 67
Laboratorium voor Mineralogie en Petrologie — Vakgroep Geologie
Universiteit Gent — Krijgslaan 281 (S8), B-9000 Gent, België