How to Tell If a Tiger’s Eye is Real or Fake?
Tiger’s eye is one of the most popular gemstones, with a beautiful golden-yellow color and brown stripes. It has several healing properties for the physical body, mind, and soul. You can buy many pieces of jewelry and art pieces made of this historical gemstone.
However, because of its popularity and reality, it is important to choose good-quality tiger’s eye gemstones to get their maximum benefits. Many brands can sell tiger’s eye stones, ornaments, jewelry, and decor items online or at physical stores.
If you are wondering how to choose the best quality tiger’s eye and not buy fake products, here is a quick guide to help you.
5 Things to Check While Looking for the Best Quality Tiger’s Eye Gemstone
Tiger’s eye is a valuable and powerful stone, which makes it quite popular among traders in the local and international markets. Unfortunately, even though many dealers sell genuine tigers’ eyes, fakes are often discovered.
Certain conditions can help us determine whether a tiger’s eye gemstone is genuine or fake. Some of them include the following:
Look For Brown-Colored Bands
Tiger’s eye belongs to the chalcedony mineral family, and it is made from a quartz crystal. Therefore, because of the oxidation of the quartz crystal, you can find plenty of brown color bands on the golden-yellow crystal. This makes it quite a powerful and valued crystal.
You can check the different brown color bands on the stone under a bright lamp. Because of oxidation, you can only see dark brown color shades on real tigers’ eye crystals. It may vary if the stone has different colors, like blue or reddish brown.
Observe The Cat’s Eye Optical Effect
The tiger’s eye gemstone has a luminous quality, which gives it optical reflecting powers. Most of these gemstones are available in cabochon or convex-shaped cuts. Therefore, this stone gives an authentic cat-eye effect because of its bands and illumination properties.
You can check this effect by shining a bright light on the stone and observing the yellow color band changing to create an optical illusion.
Examine its Glass-Like Luster
The authentic tiger’s eye stone has the power to reflect light and has a silky, glass-like luster, especially when you find a polished one. You can reflect light on the stone to check whether it has this genuine glossy finish.
Check for its Hardness and Scratching Properties
Since a tiger’s eye is made of quartz crystal, it is harder than glass. You can check the hardness of the stone on the Mohs scale. It is a real tiger’s eye if you get a score between 6.5 and 7. Typically, glass has a score of around 5.
You can also check the scratching properties of the tiger’s eye by cutting the glass piece with this gemstone.
Look At Its Magnetic Powers
Most of the gemstones are not magnetic, but since tiger’s eyes are made of oxidized material, they have the quality to be magnetic.
The attractiveness of a tiger’s eyes varies according to its type and origin. However, if you are looking at a genuine tiger’s eye, it will have enough magnetic strength to attach to any metal surface.
Conclusion
Tiger’s eye, like all gemstones, can be found in both real and fake forms on the market. Since this gemstone is in an affordable range, many dealers will try to sell you fake tiger’s eye products online or offline.
You can be smart and save time and money by checking all the above factors when buying real and good-quality tiger’s eye ornaments to get their maximum benefits. Then, buy good-quality genuine tiger’s eye from reputed dealers who will take care of this ancient and powerful stone in remarkable ways.