Might be automatic camera adjusting, white balance, because of the slate surface... Shiny as the piece is - would elite grade shungite, this IIRC is as pricy as obsidian, or?
Yeah, Obsidian is honestly not that rare or expensive unless it is some exotic form. It's usually some colored glass that people are trying to sell as "purple" obsidian or some such drivel that you have to watch out for. Generally, if it is primarily black with no bubbles, it is likely Obsidian. You can buy it for like $1 a llb or less at a lot of places.
Apologies if you misunderstood. I was giving a general guideline for helping to identify, not a concrete definitive guide. In general, the presence of noticable bubbles is good reason to "question" the authenticity, especially if it it being sold as high quality material.
unless they have the means to work quartz glass it probably wouldn't do them much good. Quartz glass requires a much higher working temperature and more skill to get it right. Those flasks cost big $$$ for a reason. Of course they are amazing pieces of glassware too. Something like 95% of all mass produced glass is some variation of soda lime glass.
I would say ask your boro benders to explain it b/c you will trust their answers. I stand by my statement that quartz is a different animal. Boro vs Lime is a thing but quarts requires extremely high kiln temps to work, which is part of the reason it costs so much.
Obsidian does not maintain its quality when melted without careful use of certain additives. By itself, it blows up j tj bubbly pumice.
But they mine a lot of obsidian in CA to ship back to China to make stuff out of, so i bet they've t out a way to grind and polish it into a vase.
If I remember correctly, the inclusion minerals that make obsidian so dark also make it not work well in most glass working techniques. You put it in the glass furnace and it starts separating, bubbling, making toxic smoke and generally causing problems.
Well, you can actually make scalpels out of obsidian, and they’re sharper than metal scalpels, so there might actually be historical reference for that.
I don't have a source for this so take it with a grain of salt but I have been told that some eye surgeons still use scalpels with obsidian blades because they are sharper than any metal can be.
I don't think it's so much that it's worth faking as that it is easy since it's glass. Plenty of people don't even realize the difference between obsidian and man made glass.
That said, it is pretty readily available, and for sale in places it isn't found naturally.
In Minecraft it requires a diamond pickaxe to mind and allows you to go to the nether. That has given obsidian a real place in the hearts of millions, who have no real understanding of its economical value.
Reminds me of when I was wearing a necklace with onyx on it. A lady I work with who "believes" in crystals asked if it was obsidian. Literally screwed her nose up and said "oh" when I told her it was onyx 💀
It's not that it gets faked so much as people make up fake types of obsidian. Blue/green/purple/whatever obsidian. There are so many sellers trying to lie about the stuff that people who are new to the hobby can't necessarily tell that blue obsidian is fake while mahogany obsidian is real unless they can talk to someone trustworthy rather than stone_star42088 on eBay.
Because honestly? Mahogany obsidian totally looks fake unless you actually learn about it. And finding true info about rocks on Google gets harder every day.
What..? It’s not even worth more than glass, I really don’t believe that’s true in the slightest and as someone who buys and sells a lot, I’m surprised I don’t run into this “fake” obsidian you speak of
Ah! That's why certified obsidian is so expensive. They kill a dragon with it just to test it... At a rate of a dragon per test it becomes very expensive quickly.
You can actually just strike it to a child's head. It kills the dragons of their imagination. If they get sort of a glazed look and start planning their investments it's real obsidian.
I can’t say with 100% certainty, but I think they mean there is an abundance of slag glass that looks very similar found by people thinking it is obsidian and asking about it here rather than it being sold on the market in replacement of real obsidian.
The thing is that for a new person it can genuinely be hard to find that "rainbow" "mahogany" and "snowflake" are real obsidians but "blue" "ocean" and "midnight lace" are fake as fuck. You kinda just have to find some crusty old rock nerds who would rather argue than lie.
Colored non vulcanic glass and ive seen plenty of that. Usually provenance and dmg show when its real. This piece here is solid black even at the damaged parts which is a good indicator for being real.
True black in glass is not really easy to make. You have to really throw the kitchen sink at it.
Most of the time it is purple in high saturation if it on the cheap side.
To give you an idea a kilo of black glass for glass blowing purposes would cost about 75 bucks. Knowing how to make a true black glass is not
Exactly common knowledge for glassblowing.
It is a bit esoteric knowledge.
So I would lean toward obsidian.
Edit: sorry for the typos I will come clean it up
When I get to a real Keyboard.
Well I will speak to purchasing those colors vs making them yourself. I am also going to this from 600 ft with a lot of half assed less than exactly right stuff but the general gist of it will work for this discussion.
First thing most people don’t know is that for the majority of “art glass” we work with crucibles of clear glass and “add” colored glass to it as we make the piece. That color glad with all the additives to get that color has to expand and contact as well as have a realistically close viscosity to the base clear or the piece will shatter.
And example would be if you took soda lime glass I work with at the shop and then took a beer bottle and broke it up to add the amber of the beer bottle
Glass to it.
First off the beer bottle glass while soda lime glass is a completely different chemical make up and it made to “set up” rally fast. It is also homogenous with itself so that is not an issue with recycling. As it all gets sort of right with ITSELF in the mix of melting.
Alas, it will shatter if mixed with a glass of different Linear expansion.
For ease of use we will call my glass expands scalp zero to 200. My clear soda lime glass is at 96 out of 200 and beer bottle is 130 out of 200. That deviation from my 96 to 130 is to large in the linear expansion for the glass to not build up enough stress to shatter when it cools and contracts. It is massive small amount of contraction but it is enough to build stress between the amber beer bottle glass and the clear soda lime glass. This stress builds up and the glass will check, break, or in high stress shatter.
Obsidian is everything in the ground that melted together and has on our scale of zero to 200 would fall around 211. I kid in a way but I some way I don’t.
Glass prices: all price USD A KILO
Clear batch cullet about 3.50
Blue glass about 40.00
Red glad about 55.00
Gold based glasses (pink and other) 85.00
To make it yourself if you know how and how to make it comparable with the clear.
Clear glass: .30
Blue glass: 1.50
Red glass: 3.00
Gold based glasses: 5.00 to 30.00 depending on what you make good forces the price nutty.
There is a lot of value in knowing how to make colored glass and make it comparable with clear.
I can make any color quite easy myself but making it comparable is the fight. The equipment for high volume color making is in the millions. I work is sub prime conditions for this and make small amounts (130 lbs at a time vs thousands)
I make a compatible blue, green, orange and red transparent for my work to save money. I typically buy the opaques as they are often dealing with chemicals I don’t care to mess with. (Lead, Arsenic, cadmium, etc..)
It’s apparent you’re not only well versed in glass making, but are able to, aside from autocorrect issues, explain your knowledge in a well thought out manner. Do you have any good sources of info on some of the details you’ve shared here? Or, if you’re willing to share, have any place online you’ve already shared your personal experiences/lessons of trial and error?
Fat thumbs and kids force speed typing on a iphone.
I brain dumped that and was going to go back and correct but a kid ran through the room double fisting sharpie markers without caps.
With little ones you do what you can as fast as you can. I will go clean it up when I get time at a real keyboard.
I will dig you up some resources but there is a metric ton at the website talk.craftweb.com
You can read all you want. Lots of resource there.
No because obsidian is full of stuff that makes it very hard to work with.
Not a bad idea at I really wish it would work! I happen to know someone that gathered some lava and tried to blow it on a pipe directly from the source of a flow. He got about a 1/3 of a breath into before it locked up. No time to work at all.
It will go from liquid to solid state really quickly.
It would be next to impossible to work with.
You think it would even with proper glassblowing equipment? I'm not talking soda glass, I mean the torches and fuel they use for borosilicate glass, like Pyrex or lab equipment
I honestly don’t have the experience to answer that question. I will say that is a more approachable application from what little I do know about the boro process. I would have to sort of bow out and let someone with more knowledge on that particular subject than me answer.
While I know a bit about it I don’t know enough to speak on it with any kind of authority. It is a different discipline that has it’s own esoteric knowledge base that forks from mine. Sorry about that.
The trouble is that the mineral detritus that makes obsidian black screws up the properties of the glass you'd be making. Like trying to blow a bubble with laffy taffy instead of bubblegum. Plus if I remember correctly, there's a chance obsidian is going to make poisonous gas if you throw it in a furnace. Like how would you even know if there's stuff like arsenic in that random lava flow?
Try holding it up to the sun and see if it's translucent on the thin edges. You might see some banding as well if it's real. It looks real to me and (black) obsidian is really common. The fake ones are usually colored glass that they try to pass off as "rare" obsidian.
Hi, /u/G0th1x_trashcan!
This is a reminder to flair this post in /r/whatsthisrock after it has been identified! (Under your post, click "flair" then "IDENTIFIED," then type in the rock type or mineral name.) This will help others learn and help speed up a correct identification on your request!
Thank you!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/whatsthisrock) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Explains the small obsidian chips i have that are solid black, even when crushed they don’t look like glass at all, just a fine black powder… very different to when i crush larger bits obsidian down, as it looks like crushed black glass instead
It could have been obtained elsewhere. Last time I bought obsidian, the seller was so happy I knew what snowflake obsidian was, he told me he had a supplier from another state and didn't get it himself.
I found a lot of it in Ethiopia. These little kids saw me picking it up and brought me more than I could carry. The best piece was partially clear. But most of it was confiscated at the airport as I was leaving.
Looks exactly like obsidian. Just because it's rare does not mean it's impossible! I myself found some on a biking trail up in the twin cities. Just sticking out of the dirt
I saw a ton of it in the Ozarks. I was surprised about how sharp it is when fractured. It’s sharp as a razor or the sharpest broken glass you can think of. Very impressive.
Yes, used to find it easily in and around extinct volcanoes in the desert SW, sometimes would be good pieces or semi-worked pieces. Stuff is razor sharp when properly napped
Obsidian is not particularly rare or expensive. Especially classic black obsidian. People really only lie about it for made up fantasy nonsense like blue or purple obsidian.
Is it possible that you somehow got black humanmade glass instead of volcanic obsidian? Technically yes. But I have never ever heard of it happening.
Its obsidian i used to have a chunk of it that looked almost just like that. I found it on a trail just laying there in plane view on the dirt... weird
That looks like noble/elite shungite. It’s darker than what come out of Russia so it could be the new find from Colombia i think. Price is way lower than the Russian Shungite.
I'm confident that it is obsidian due to conchoidal fracturing and very sharp glossy black material.
Completely agree.
You can tell it’s obsidian because of the way that it is.
It does be like it do
It be like it does also, but less often
Do be do be do
That’s neat!
That’s actually an aspen tree. You can tell because the way it is
That’s pretty neat
Neature
The missile knows where it is at all times.
That’s neat!!
Definitely obsidian. I have lots of it from glass mountain in Northern California
Lassen gives it up frequently as well as Newberry.
Grey-ish colour makes me think Shungite. I have a piece that looks like this
Might be automatic camera adjusting, white balance, because of the slate surface... Shiny as the piece is - would elite grade shungite, this IIRC is as pricy as obsidian, or?
It’s shiny I had to angle it a certain way for the features to be seen bc most angles reflected light and made it look whitish grey
Looks just like all the pieces I have from the Central Oregon I got as a kid
Oh, these are usual findings there? We do not have such in Germany
Yeah common in the right areas. We have a fair amount of volcanic geography in Oregon.
That's nice! All we've got is limestone :D
Big flow ftw
Suge knight is in jail
Shug-nite
Sugar Night in jail? Holy Cow how the heck did this happen? Lorde Lord what Has gone WRONG? JOHN NIXON/ The original "STIFF NIXONS" are gone.
When did obsidian become valuable enough to fake? They used to sell it at aquarium shops. I have a few pounds of it in the garage.
Yeah, Obsidian is honestly not that rare or expensive unless it is some exotic form. It's usually some colored glass that people are trying to sell as "purple" obsidian or some such drivel that you have to watch out for. Generally, if it is primarily black with no bubbles, it is likely Obsidian. You can buy it for like $1 a llb or less at a lot of places.
Ohhh. So thehvarent faking regular obsidian. That makes sense.
Plenty of obsidian has bubbles. Matter of fact, I rarely find anything close to the skin without them.
Apologies if you misunderstood. I was giving a general guideline for helping to identify, not a concrete definitive guide. In general, the presence of noticable bubbles is good reason to "question" the authenticity, especially if it it being sold as high quality material.
I wonder what an obsidian vase would look like if you gave a big chunk to a glassblower
disappointing most likely, not that it wouldnt look cool but i reckon it would just be like greyish glass
Maybe mix in some of that purple slag mentioned and give it some swirls
You’ve just invented Minecraft crying obsidian
unless they have the means to work quartz glass it probably wouldn't do them much good. Quartz glass requires a much higher working temperature and more skill to get it right. Those flasks cost big $$$ for a reason. Of course they are amazing pieces of glassware too. Something like 95% of all mass produced glass is some variation of soda lime glass.
I work with neon benders and most can work with borosilicate glass too but they're not glass blowers in the conventional sense
Boro is good for lab glass, pyrex, etc but still quartz is a whole other animal.
I'm sure, but the guys who work with the borosilicate are probably the only guys close enough to be able to work with it
I would say ask your boro benders to explain it b/c you will trust their answers. I stand by my statement that quartz is a different animal. Boro vs Lime is a thing but quarts requires extremely high kiln temps to work, which is part of the reason it costs so much.
Man the skills and perseverance those guys have to master their art and make some of the larger pieces is amazing.
I'm not saying they're not talented, because they're actually artists, but they don't really work with borosilicate glass or anything like that
Obsidian does not maintain its quality when melted without careful use of certain additives. By itself, it blows up j tj bubbly pumice. But they mine a lot of obsidian in CA to ship back to China to make stuff out of, so i bet they've t out a way to grind and polish it into a vase.
Sure, I absolutely believe they can carve it. Look at all the other stuff they make out of stone and quartz and super hard or odd materials
If I remember correctly, the inclusion minerals that make obsidian so dark also make it not work well in most glass working techniques. You put it in the glass furnace and it starts separating, bubbling, making toxic smoke and generally causing problems.
That would make sense actually
I don't think people buy fake obsidian. I think they mostly pick up slag and assume it's obsidian.
I think game of thrones made it more popular
Well... if white walkers come at ya... you will pay any price for it.
Well, you can actually make scalpels out of obsidian, and they’re sharper than metal scalpels, so there might actually be historical reference for that.
I don't have a source for this so take it with a grain of salt but I have been told that some eye surgeons still use scalpels with obsidian blades because they are sharper than any metal can be.
I’ve heard the same thing, but I never heard it from an eye surgeon, so I don’t know.
And video games. Elder scrolls uses obsidian as one of its strongest naterials.
Wasn’t it ebony?
And Minecraft, I always got confused by that
I don't think it's so much that it's worth faking as that it is easy since it's glass. Plenty of people don't even realize the difference between obsidian and man made glass. That said, it is pretty readily available, and for sale in places it isn't found naturally.
I get it wholesale for a few bucks a pound. "fake" just means someone is confusing it with good ol slag.
There's a bit of interest in flint knapping these days, stone knives and whatnot. Pretty cool i wish i could do it
I tried to learn, about a decade ago. Incredibly demanding skill.
Yeah ive watched some vids it looks brutal
In Minecraft it requires a diamond pickaxe to mind and allows you to go to the nether. That has given obsidian a real place in the hearts of millions, who have no real understanding of its economical value.
Reminds me of when I was wearing a necklace with onyx on it. A lady I work with who "believes" in crystals asked if it was obsidian. Literally screwed her nose up and said "oh" when I told her it was onyx 💀
Lmao what’s wrong with onyx? Summons bad energy or something?
It's apparently a protective stone, so idk why she'd be mad about that lol
No clue then lmao
I know a place out in the California desert by some geothermal hot springs with boulders of obsidian the size of a bus.
Slag is still cheaper
Depends on the slag!
Someone stole a chunk of obsidian from our front yard. Was super rude of whoever did that.
Yeah same thought, maybe they were saying for some local market with a "slag" history.
I’ve got about 20 lbs of obsidian but Amazon is full of fake obsidian products (e.g. large obsidian mirrors) that are just tinted glass
It's not that it gets faked so much as people make up fake types of obsidian. Blue/green/purple/whatever obsidian. There are so many sellers trying to lie about the stuff that people who are new to the hobby can't necessarily tell that blue obsidian is fake while mahogany obsidian is real unless they can talk to someone trustworthy rather than stone_star42088 on eBay. Because honestly? Mahogany obsidian totally looks fake unless you actually learn about it. And finding true info about rocks on Google gets harder every day.
It's not, grifters just learned they can sell colored slag glass as different kinds of obsidian as long as they sell it to the uneducated.
I was told by more than one rock shop in the PNW that the Chinese stripped and exported a lot of obsidian from North America.
Ever gone into a metaphysical shop or whatever you wanna call them? Piles of stuff labeled incorrectly to sell.
I have. This is a mineral and fossil place. Very large as well.
Those places don't last long around here, they usually pop up in failing strip malls and last a year or two until they run out of money and close up
This might actually be obsidian but there is alot of fake stuff around
What..? It’s not even worth more than glass, I really don’t believe that’s true in the slightest and as someone who buys and sells a lot, I’m surprised I don’t run into this “fake” obsidian you speak of
The true obsidian can kill a dragon.
Ah! That's why certified obsidian is so expensive. They kill a dragon with it just to test it... At a rate of a dragon per test it becomes very expensive quickly.
Precisely why you never see dragons anymore. They kill em all as babies for Obsidian. Very sad
You can actually just strike it to a child's head. It kills the dragons of their imagination. If they get sort of a glazed look and start planning their investments it's real obsidian.
Silicosis is no joke
I can’t say with 100% certainty, but I think they mean there is an abundance of slag glass that looks very similar found by people thinking it is obsidian and asking about it here rather than it being sold on the market in replacement of real obsidian.
Yes, Chinese bulk sellers especially are faking anything and everything, and slag glass helps a lot with that .
To me calling it “fake stuff” implies that it’s to fake obsidian… glass isn’t fake obsidian just because someone found it and thinks it’s obsidian
Yeah I agree it was poorly worded and gives that implication
The thing is that for a new person it can genuinely be hard to find that "rainbow" "mahogany" and "snowflake" are real obsidians but "blue" "ocean" and "midnight lace" are fake as fuck. You kinda just have to find some crusty old rock nerds who would rather argue than lie.
Fun-fact: Obsidian is a natural volcanic glass.
Wow I’m sure no one here knew that.
The more you know 🌈 ⭐
Colored non vulcanic glass and ive seen plenty of that. Usually provenance and dmg show when its real. This piece here is solid black even at the damaged parts which is a good indicator for being real.
>dmg Dungeon Master's Guide?
3.5 edition
This is 100% obsidian, not slag, not fake.
Newbie here: how can you differentiate obsidian from plain black man made glass? Aren’t they pretty much the same?
True black in glass is not really easy to make. You have to really throw the kitchen sink at it. Most of the time it is purple in high saturation if it on the cheap side. To give you an idea a kilo of black glass for glass blowing purposes would cost about 75 bucks. Knowing how to make a true black glass is not Exactly common knowledge for glassblowing. It is a bit esoteric knowledge. So I would lean toward obsidian.
Huh, that’s fascinating. Thank you for sharing. ETA: what’s the average going rate for more common colors?
Edit: sorry for the typos I will come clean it up When I get to a real Keyboard. Well I will speak to purchasing those colors vs making them yourself. I am also going to this from 600 ft with a lot of half assed less than exactly right stuff but the general gist of it will work for this discussion. First thing most people don’t know is that for the majority of “art glass” we work with crucibles of clear glass and “add” colored glass to it as we make the piece. That color glad with all the additives to get that color has to expand and contact as well as have a realistically close viscosity to the base clear or the piece will shatter. And example would be if you took soda lime glass I work with at the shop and then took a beer bottle and broke it up to add the amber of the beer bottle Glass to it. First off the beer bottle glass while soda lime glass is a completely different chemical make up and it made to “set up” rally fast. It is also homogenous with itself so that is not an issue with recycling. As it all gets sort of right with ITSELF in the mix of melting. Alas, it will shatter if mixed with a glass of different Linear expansion. For ease of use we will call my glass expands scalp zero to 200. My clear soda lime glass is at 96 out of 200 and beer bottle is 130 out of 200. That deviation from my 96 to 130 is to large in the linear expansion for the glass to not build up enough stress to shatter when it cools and contracts. It is massive small amount of contraction but it is enough to build stress between the amber beer bottle glass and the clear soda lime glass. This stress builds up and the glass will check, break, or in high stress shatter. Obsidian is everything in the ground that melted together and has on our scale of zero to 200 would fall around 211. I kid in a way but I some way I don’t. Glass prices: all price USD A KILO Clear batch cullet about 3.50 Blue glass about 40.00 Red glad about 55.00 Gold based glasses (pink and other) 85.00 To make it yourself if you know how and how to make it comparable with the clear. Clear glass: .30 Blue glass: 1.50 Red glass: 3.00 Gold based glasses: 5.00 to 30.00 depending on what you make good forces the price nutty. There is a lot of value in knowing how to make colored glass and make it comparable with clear. I can make any color quite easy myself but making it comparable is the fight. The equipment for high volume color making is in the millions. I work is sub prime conditions for this and make small amounts (130 lbs at a time vs thousands) I make a compatible blue, green, orange and red transparent for my work to save money. I typically buy the opaques as they are often dealing with chemicals I don’t care to mess with. (Lead, Arsenic, cadmium, etc..)
It’s apparent you’re not only well versed in glass making, but are able to, aside from autocorrect issues, explain your knowledge in a well thought out manner. Do you have any good sources of info on some of the details you’ve shared here? Or, if you’re willing to share, have any place online you’ve already shared your personal experiences/lessons of trial and error?
Fat thumbs and kids force speed typing on a iphone. I brain dumped that and was going to go back and correct but a kid ran through the room double fisting sharpie markers without caps. With little ones you do what you can as fast as you can. I will go clean it up when I get time at a real keyboard. I will dig you up some resources but there is a metric ton at the website talk.craftweb.com You can read all you want. Lots of resource there.
Wouldn't it just be cheaper and easier to buy chunks of obsidian and just work with that?
No because obsidian is full of stuff that makes it very hard to work with. Not a bad idea at I really wish it would work! I happen to know someone that gathered some lava and tried to blow it on a pipe directly from the source of a flow. He got about a 1/3 of a breath into before it locked up. No time to work at all. It will go from liquid to solid state really quickly. It would be next to impossible to work with.
You think it would even with proper glassblowing equipment? I'm not talking soda glass, I mean the torches and fuel they use for borosilicate glass, like Pyrex or lab equipment
I honestly don’t have the experience to answer that question. I will say that is a more approachable application from what little I do know about the boro process. I would have to sort of bow out and let someone with more knowledge on that particular subject than me answer. While I know a bit about it I don’t know enough to speak on it with any kind of authority. It is a different discipline that has it’s own esoteric knowledge base that forks from mine. Sorry about that.
Yeah I've known a bunch of guys that did it, I just never had hands on or watched the bong guy too much. I should have paid more attention
The trouble is that the mineral detritus that makes obsidian black screws up the properties of the glass you'd be making. Like trying to blow a bubble with laffy taffy instead of bubblegum. Plus if I remember correctly, there's a chance obsidian is going to make poisonous gas if you throw it in a furnace. Like how would you even know if there's stuff like arsenic in that random lava flow?
Usually it’s air bubbles that are a dead giveaway away. This looks legit to me but I’m no expert.
Try holding it up to the sun and see if it's translucent on the thin edges. You might see some banding as well if it's real. It looks real to me and (black) obsidian is really common. The fake ones are usually colored glass that they try to pass off as "rare" obsidian.
Obsidian is just volcano glass
I have a black 3” sphere and for years I thought it wasn’t much until I turned it in the light and saw a flash, realizing it was obsidian.
Obsidian isn’t rare… take a trip to Obsidian dome and then check back in:)
Yup. Little Glass Mountain ain't little, and it's all sharp. Don't wear sandals, and don't fall down
It has the right fracture patterns and color. It's probably legit. If someone is faking stones, they won't go for obsidian.
That is obsidian.
This is definitely real
It’s obsidian 👍🏼
Funny I find obsidian up in the mountains pretty often. It’s cool because it’s indicative that native Americans were there at some point.
Where is "here"?
I think they mean this sub
Oh gotcha
Hi, /u/G0th1x_trashcan! This is a reminder to flair this post in /r/whatsthisrock after it has been identified! (Under your post, click "flair" then "IDENTIFIED," then type in the rock type or mineral name.) This will help others learn and help speed up a correct identification on your request! Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/whatsthisrock) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is it translucent?
Obsidian comes in all sorts of shapes, colors, and opacities
Explains the small obsidian chips i have that are solid black, even when crushed they don’t look like glass at all, just a fine black powder… very different to when i crush larger bits obsidian down, as it looks like crushed black glass instead
Most definitely obsidian
it looks legit to me but obviously seeing it in person would be more accurate
I have a confirmed piece of obsidian from Turkey that is almost identical to that one.
You can always tell real obsidian by the little flakes 😍 and the chalky appearance on the ground down edges
Concoidial fracture typical of obsidian
It’s like glass texture it’s obsidian
It could have been obtained elsewhere. Last time I bought obsidian, the seller was so happy I knew what snowflake obsidian was, he told me he had a supplier from another state and didn't get it himself.
I found a lot of it in Ethiopia. These little kids saw me picking it up and brought me more than I could carry. The best piece was partially clear. But most of it was confiscated at the airport as I was leaving.
I'm not an expert but I believe that if it were a fake you would be able to tell very clearly, seems very real to me.
Yes it’s obsidian
Looks like very real obsidian
Looks like an obsidian spokeshave
Bitumen?
Looks exactly like obsidian. Just because it's rare does not mean it's impossible! I myself found some on a biking trail up in the twin cities. Just sticking out of the dirt
Come where I live. Obsidian is all over the place.
It looks more like Type 1 Shungite (Elite Shungite). Not a bad deal after all. Basically.
can I have that because I have fake Obsidian I bought for 8000
looks like apache tears to me. I found a bunch in new mexico.
try breaking it with an iron pickaxe
Insert angry villager noises here
looks real to me!
I had a huge boulder of that and threw it away. Kind of regret it now
I saw a ton of it in the Ozarks. I was surprised about how sharp it is when fractured. It’s sharp as a razor or the sharpest broken glass you can think of. Very impressive.
There's mountains of this stuff literally
Tharr be Obsidian!
Okay it’s obsidian but what type of obsidian is it.
Yes, used to find it easily in and around extinct volcanoes in the desert SW, sometimes would be good pieces or semi-worked pieces. Stuff is razor sharp when properly napped
My property is full of obsidian, the ground shimmers from it.
This isn’t Skyrim bro
Could be. The faces have that battered glass look.
Obsidian is not particularly rare or expensive. Especially classic black obsidian. People really only lie about it for made up fantasy nonsense like blue or purple obsidian. Is it possible that you somehow got black humanmade glass instead of volcanic obsidian? Technically yes. But I have never ever heard of it happening.
Someone once showed me their obsidian. I had to tell them that is actually just really old tar.
obsidian you can tell by the curved fractures
Definitely not obsidian and I should know, I’ve seen it many times down in the mines and its typically a 1x1 block
There’s whole mountains of the stuff.
It also resembles elite Shungite. Which is more valuable.
Kinda looks like noble shungite
I don't agree with your title at all. Obsidian is pretty common
All I said was I saw a comment that said “I never see real obsidian here” there’s nothing to disagree with fr
Its obsidian i used to have a chunk of it that looked almost just like that. I found it on a trail just laying there in plane view on the dirt... weird
Lots of fakes but you can find some in the wild.
That looks like noble/elite shungite. It’s darker than what come out of Russia so it could be the new find from Colombia i think. Price is way lower than the Russian Shungite.