Fakebusters: Pink Tourmaline

Well Fakebusters, it is that time again, when I share all the latest fakes I have discovered with you all. Today we have found some excellent examples of fake pink tourmaline.

This one is a pretty obvious fake. The colour is way too bright and artificial looking, the fracture lines around the dreadful carving are not typical for pink tourmaline. Plus it would be incredibly hard to find a piece of pink tourmaline this clear at this size for anything under a good few thousand dollars.  

This Barbie coloured mess was also being sold as pink tourmaline of course. I am sure it is obvious why it is not pink tourmaline, being ridiculously bright, in tones that would not naturally occur in tourmaline. 

This one is harder to spot, as it looks very similar to the carved pink tourmaline in quartz. At a glance it looks pretty good however on closer inspection you can see that the pink component is actually orange. The natural tourmaline tends to have more clustered look, rather than uniform spots of colour.

This one is the real thing! You can see the bright reddish pink of the tourmaline in varying size, with plenty of quartz in between. Still be careful though sometimes they are cutting up pieces of tourmaline, putting it in white resin and carving it!