Gem Collecting for Beginners! | Quartz, Crystals, and more! 

My grandpa used to take me rock hunting. He was very much into all things gem/mineral related. He got into cutting cabs and making bevel settings. He liked display pieces and things with stories behind them. My grandparents moved just south of Tucson, and yearly he was in heaven getting to go to the gem and mineral show every year. He'd help me identify rocks I found in river beds and share all this knowledge with me. He got me into gem collecting, and rock hunting. He'd crack thundereggs with me and send me jewelry he had made me. When he passed away he left me all his equipment and his rocks. I'd rather still have him, but he lives on in stories when I get to tell people where the 2 lbs malachite on the mantle came from or the time I was with him and found my favorite aventurine stone at a flea market, or even when he showed me how using my spit could make a random piece of Jasper I found on the ground look so brilliantly red. I loved being his little pebble pup.

I’ve been collecting gemstones for the past 17 years. The colors, sizes, and shapes are so eye-catching. I’ve never seen a bicolor Afghan topaz, but I have two very large bicolor topazes from Ukraine.

As a kid I collected any pretty rocks I found. When I was very young one of my mom's friends gave me a small semi-polished turquoise and that was the beginning of the end for me. 😋 I have so many crystals in my collection now. Spheres, towers, pyramids, skulls, animal carvings, tumbles, rough, hearts, and palm stones.

That pyramid is getting NO airtime at all!

“Follow your passion, follow your heart- what” lol that moment when you hear yourself 😅 Great video! Entertaining delivery 👌🏼

Awesome video sure glad to hear one doesn’t need expensive gems to have a collection fantastic knowledge beautiful collection you have thank you. Started with fossils , pink quartz , pyrite , and much more started at 8 years of age

Gorgeous pieces. But you really should mention the dangers some of these minerals can pose. For example, stibnite contains antimony, which if ingested can cause symptoms similar to those from arsenic poisoning. You certainly don’t want to be grinding or cutting that stuff up and breathing it in.

I can't remember my first piece. It was a long time ago but I will say that I hated fluorite when I started selling crystals. I know, crazy to think. I love it now.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My first in my collection was optical Calcite, I was amazed when you placed it over ‘text’ and the double refraction caused the letters to double. Rocks that friends send me from rockhounding have a high personal value to me. Being from the U.K. my friend Regan from AZ sends me some beautiful specimens including Fire Agate, Geodes etc etc. Great video, thanks for sharing. 😀👍

i live in the same house from when i was younger and me and my friends still go next to my bedroom outside to get rocks, we hit the JACKPOT! we found obsidian, quarts, and more! its so fun

"Follow your heart....WHAT?!" That was hilarious!! You're my favorite! 💎💎🧡💚💛💎💎

My crystal obsession began with a blood jasper I got gifted in the church when i was a child. Since then I always enjoyed to collect crystals and learn about them, now I've got a collection of hundreds of crystals

I found green stone while digging some soil at my garden when i was 16 from there my journey of collecting rocks started

Whaaaat??? I would love to find calcite like that!! 😍✨

Quartz is absolutely not boring: Not only specimes with oriented inclusions are interesting, but amethyst, citrine, smokey quartz and - normally lab grown green quartz and blue quartz are highly fascinating too. And what is with opal, carneol, chalzedone, agate, jasper .... flint ... quartz is a core family of gemstones for me !

Out of all the specimens in the video, I just absolutely love those calcite crystals from Rob’s collection, minerals with a story are always the best kind!

I love this! I don't have a lot of gemstones, but I love them all

Man, I just couldn't leave the store without getting a deep purple rough star sapphire once... it is gorgeous.

I found gemstones in my front and backyard a year ago. Then my son started to find some at his worksite! Gems are a very noted part in my jewelry collection! ❤️🦋

I’ve learned so much from this channel!

My first crystal was a quartz cluster, which I got from JTV! I’ve been watching since the late 2000’s and loved the gemstone shows, especially late night when they showed and sold crystals in the rough.

My gem collection actually started when my sister got me two Quartz specimens for Christmas. I've loved jewelry making for years and when I found this channel I fell in love with it!

My grandparents lived in Western NC all my life every time we would go down we stopped at one or more of the buy a bucket gem mines. I now have around 4-5 hundred pounds of different stones from around the world.

I had always liked minerals, but it really started when I was given a tiny polished moss agate in elementary school. I had been doing a little geology course at the museum and they passed around a bucket with 100+ tiny agates and everyone got to take one home. Mine was a dark purplish grey with a green fern shaped inclusion. Eventually that interest turned into a fluorescent mineral collection :D

My very first crystal was a carnelian tumble stone from a school trip but I didn’t really start collecting properly till 4 years ago, now I’ve got hundreds of crystals but my all time favourite is my petroleum quartz that was given to me as a freebie and labelled citrine, I was so excited when I first saw it had moving bubbles in it, I could stare at it for hours.

Excellent channel! That calcite, it's not clean like mine refuse, it's fractured and scratched. It's not tumbled and worn down like eroded deposits from upstream of your location. My guess would be glacial deposits, broken and scratched from being pressed between up to two miles of ice and the surface soil and rock.

I like rock hunting around my in laws' house. There aren't any crystal formations, but the rocks are SO fascinating. No idea what they are, wish I knew more or where to find more info. But there is quartz, again, not crystals, just opaque white hunks of quarts with interesting inclusions. I have one with a tiny bit of pyrite, it's really cool! My wedding ring is a rose quartz stone, so I'd like to turn one of the quartz rocks I found into a simple band for my husband. He has a wedding ring, but never wears it and I think it's because it's thick, so I want to make a thinner one that might be more comfortable.

Beautiful crystals! I love collecting crystals and I specialize in collecting Garden Quartz :)

I love fluorite one of the first crystal I had started my collection with

Best presenter on channel. I’m also grateful for this intro

Not all ametrine is heat treated/radiated. I would only buy the natural ametrine.

My collection began on a family vacation to Colorado 42 yrs ago when i was 12. In one town we were told that we could find turquoise in the dirt alleys. I found about 10 pieces and thus began my collection. Those are my most valuable pieces as my collection began with something I found myself. I love how Rob keeps saying "collect what you like". Collections dont have to be fancy, expensive or "top of the line". They only need to be something you yourself enjoy.

Fluorite is one of my top 3 favorite gems, topaz and agate take the other spots

I first saw Fool's Gold at our local garden center & loved the sparkly glittery look. I think that was my first piece. Then I found a chunk of amethyst in a hippie type store & bought it as it's my zodiac crystal. My mum is into crystals for their protective and spiritual powers so I've been surrounded by them but mostly like them for their colours, shape and sparkle. I'm not a hoarder (I hate clutter) so don't collect them but I have a couple. I mostly look for unusual ones in Jewellery pieces. I love anything blue and green. 💚💙💜

I’ve always like collecting gems,my first was an amethyst given to me by a kind male guest who stayed in my nans bed and breakfast house,he also gave me my first ever slice of pizza..at 15 years old x

Ugh Rob is so beautiful he aclypses these wildly gorgeous specimens! Editors take note 😍😋🤤

I started collecting quarts crystals when I was quite young. My parents were members of a camp resort in the woods, and an older gentleman taught me how to find quartz crystals. I could find the tiniest ones up to about the size of my thumb in the campgrounds. Then I started finding Apache Tears (obsidian) in the same area.

My #1 tip for any new rock collector is always get what speaks to you and you see it and think “wow” because you think it looks so cool. Never just buy something just because or you think you need it to get started. No. You want to buy stones that you look at your collection and you are amazed and happy every time you see it. If you just go and buy a bunch of random stones, you’ll just see a bunch of rocks sitting there. Get the things that speak to you. For instance, I much prefer diamonds with a bunch of inclusions more than a clear diamond, though it is much cheaper that the clear, and Is sometimes even just discarded and used industrially.

This was honestly a great video for me I think I enjoy hearing your passion for more then the rest of the team there 😂, also the wiz black and yellow cut had me and my wife laughing so hard.

Ametrine, is ALL from Bolivia. It is NOT heat treated, nor irradiated. Look on RU-vid for Bolivian Ametrine, and you will see the stone comes right out of the mine with its characteristic bi-color. Synthetic Ametrine is all treated with heat and gamma radiation, but that is another animal.

i guess i started off as being like many kids collecting cool rocks, then there was some gifted jewelry that i liked the materials of more than anything, and the find of some really underpriced quartz statues at a thrift shop lol seems sometimes collections just kinda happen, at least if you're not doing it too seriously ^^; these were cool, i especially liked the ancient flash powder XD

I've been collecting gems and minerals my whole life. My mom tells me that, on stroller rides as a baby, I would point at rocks on the side of the road and she would have to pick them up for me. Then, as a kid, on a couple tours of caverns, I went panning for rocks (buying a bag of dirt with stones in it from the gift shop and rinsing the dirt away) and started my collection. My first year in college, my friend took me to a local crystal shop and I fell in love with gems once again. A couple years later, I discovered rock tumbling.

Beautiful minerals 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

My more serious gem and mineral collection really started when I inherited my grandfather's old mineral collection, some lovely specimens to get me intrigued, since then, I've branched out and started collecting sapphires, gem opals and chrysoprase more than anything else as they are generally the best value specimens I can obtain locally. I have a soft spot for broken Hill minerals though, it would have to be my favourite mineral locality by far, with so many different minerals to be found there and some truely iconic associations like the gorgeous combinations with galena, spessartine and world class gemmy red rhodonite rhombohedra *personal favourite Broken Hill minerals are quite popular amongst collectors, however, due to the large volume of specimens that came out of the mines there one can still expect to find plenty of cabinet size specimens in the market for a decent price.

I recently bought a tourmalinated quartz ring. It's so unique.

All those gemstones you shown in this video are very pretty both treated and raw.🙂💎 It's very helpful information that you yold us on how to collect gemstones for beginners.👨‍🏫📘 I think all of these gemstones are very pretty and unique looking especially the colors too.🌈💎 Thanks for sharing us and good video.😉👍💎

I've been collecting 30 years now it started with seeing an amethyst geode slice in a gift shop after a cave tour in the smokey mountains and on and off since

I love raw crystals. Great video, easy to watch 👍👌🤙

I have a nice collection of strawberry quartz, several shapes of rutilated and tourmalated quartz

I understand time limits, but when Rob-or any of the folks- get talking, it is so fun. And I'm learning. Edits make me wonder what I'm missing. :)

got my first gemstone rough at a place you sift through buckets been hooked ever since i now have a lot of cut and uncut gemstones a lot i want to cut but dont have a cutter in my area

I try to collect with an eye to minerals from Canada. Add in some silver from Cobalt Ontario, such incredible history. Some copper. But I will pick up anything that catches my eye, and doesn't break the bank. It does not have to be big to be beautiful.

Great video! As a seasoned collector, I suggest if you are starting a gemstone collection, decide how you wanna collect gems. I.e. I collect them by type and sub variety (like sapphires, yellow sapphires, pink sapphires etc.) Also don't get yourself overwhelmed so start with easy to acquire cheap gems like amethyst, citrine, peridot, blue topaz, tiger's eye, white quartz, etc. Lastly, stay within your budget- do not overdo it! Happy collecting!

I love anything rough. Almost everything I have is rough. 😅. Would love any of these pieces though! My first piece was a small garnet that had surfaced.

I have so many gems now, I started collecting when I was six and found a huge quartz specimen the size of my hand for 50¢ at a garage sale. Then I would get grab bags of tumbled and dyed stones, and some years ago I started collecting megalodon teeth, trilobites, amethyst, and I have at least a hundred rough opals, from both Ethiopia and Australia. I just added a cool polished quartz landscape, a hematite with rutile, and a epidote on quartz! Edit: i keep remembering more things I have haha, I have pyrite spheres, quartz, fluorite, ammonites both with and without ammolite, a coprolite, my mother in law gifted me some lovely rough and faceted gem samples when she went to the Smithsonian, herkimer diamonds, I didn’t realize just how many I have, there’s more I haven’t even mentioned lol

So my first few pieces of my current collection were a like 5 lb hunk of rose quartz that was chillin at my local rock shop this gorgeous amethyst cluster and a beautiful I think Amazonite? Pendulum

Hi . I live close to kashmir so I started my first gem collection with corundum sapphire and rubies. I am also collecting aquamarine and peridot. I never sold one but I buy from minners.

I love collecting rocks and metals. I love how we all geek out over cool looking minerals, almost like monkeys with shiny things 😂

Beautiful

Awesome video! I'm still fairly new to the hobby and would love to hear jtv talk to us about gem and mineral societies. I want to join the local group, but wanting to wait until my youngest daughter starts kindergarten, so I'll have more free time. I'd appreciate a video I can watch a thousand times until next fall

beautiful ❤

What about the rainbow pyramid? :(

Love your videos ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ huge fan I want to become a gemologist just like you guys

My favorite form of quartz is Double Terminated Black Phantom in Clear. They are so striking. Almost spooky even. I have a small one I got off ebay.

For me, my favorite Quartz has Hubnerite growing on it.

Yup collecting is no limit 😀😀

I started collecting crystals a few months ago and i have 16 of them now- i found one by myself, its a big quartz chunk that i found in a literal mud puddle (sounds disgusting but i actually feel like that quartz wanted me because i never saw it there and one day when i went crystal hunting i saw it shine in the mud puddle and i was excited to have my first big find ever)

Rutillated quartz top 👍👍👍

Wait, what was the Pride pyramid at the end haha?

my rock collection is a *lot* of polished and a few raw im super into. my favorite is my sphere of mexican crazy lace agate!!

Collect what ever you like 👍 I like that 👌

Laughed out loud at "dark and yellow"

ROCK👏PEOPLE👏

I wonder if you can use mirac acid on some stones I did a muriatic acid test on one of my stones and basically ate it up

Your editor ❤😂❤

You never really talked about the pyramid in your collection. What is it?

I've found my people !

Is the pyramid an Orgonite?

I want that hood lol

I wonder what stones were in the pyramid he had

Ooooh what about the orgonite pyramid 😊 ❤

The whole time during the last one i was thinking...What about the pyramid?? 😹

How does a layperson differentiate stones from say an estate sale? Especially flourite and quartz’s?

I have 2 kg Ruby zosite

Netural rock crystal colors less certificate kya hota hey ji

I have gem stone rare , very the color is green, blue, gold,black I don't know what the name is.

❤

Ametrine is never treated

Cost of rubby zosite

Ametrine is a natural stone though, isn't it? From Bolivia.

Eu tenho um petróleo diamante

Hi

What is the pyramidal all about?

Not all ametrine is treated... Anahi Bolivia

Pls check my pist video! I cant identify what kind of gems stone i have

So that's what BOGO means - buy one get one lol 😂 😂

They didn't like that pyramid huh?

I’m called Ruby , so gimme a second to polish up myself

I love the ugly stuff, limonite after pyrite is my favorite, not interested in heat treatment

can I have one?