Fakebusters: Colourful Rutilated Quartz

While rutilated quartz does exhibit variations in its colour, from gold, to red, to silver and almost black, there is a rash of artificial rutilated quartz hitting the market on popular auction sites. Today we will cover the ones we have seen recently.

Firstly is this black "inclusion" which is often called either rutile or tourmaline. It is too thick to be rutile and too uniform to be black tourmaline.

This is the artificial golden rutile, and you can see how uniform the strands are. They also have blunt, square ends, which does not happen in nature. The quartz around it is also far too clear. 

Now we are on to the real oddities! This is a "green rutile" pendant, which does not happen in nature. 

Pink... yes pink rutile. Neon shiny pink. Nope.