Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.
Blue Lace Agate
A soft sky-blue banded chalcedony prized for its delicate, lace-like white and blue swirling patterns.
gemstone
Crazy Lace Agate
A Mexican banded agate famous for tightly swirling, contorted lacy patterns in warm reds, creams, and golds.
mineral
Swazi Lace Agate
A swirling, intricately banded lace agate from Eswatini (Swaziland) in soft greys, blues and lavenders with delicate folded patterns.
gemstone
Mexican Lace Agate
A vividly swirling banded agate from northern Mexico with intricate looping patterns in warm reds, golds and creams.
gemstone
Lace Obsidian
Black volcanic glass laced with delicate web-like veins of contrasting color, formed by flow banding and fine crystallization.
igneous
Owyhee Blue Agate
A soft sky-blue chalcedony from the Owyhee region of Oregon and Idaho, prized for its calming, opaque powder-blue color.
gemstone
Holley Blue Agate
A rare translucent lavender-blue agate from the Holley area of Oregon, prized for its soft purple-blue color.
gemstone
Midnight Lace Obsidian
A black volcanic glass threaded with delicate grey, swirling lace-like bands of flow lines that show beautifully when polished.
igneous
Agate
A banded variety of chalcedony quartz, famed for its colorful concentric layers and enormous range of patterns and colors.
mineral
Blue Calcite
A soft, soothing powder-blue variety of calcite, a common calcium carbonate mineral often sold as gentle tumbled stones.
mineral
Blue Chalcedony
A translucent, soft blue variety of microcrystalline quartz whose color comes from light scattering through its fine structure.
mineral
Blue Beryl
The blue color variety of beryl, ranging from pale sky tones to rich sea-blue, best known in its finest grades as aquamarine.
gemstone
Blue Opal
A soft blue common opal, famously from Peru, valued for its serene sky-to-teal color rather than play-of-color.
gemstone
Blue Jasper
An opaque blue variety of chalcedony jasper, less common than red or green forms, colored by mineral inclusions.
mineral
Blue Apatite
A blue calcium phosphate mineral with vivid color and middling hardness, the same mineral family that forms bones and teeth.
mineral
Blue Goldstone
A man-made glittering glass colored deep blue with cobalt and studded with tiny copper crystals that mimic a starry night sky.
gemstone
Blue Tourmaline
Tourmaline in blue tones, encompassing iron-colored indicolite and the rare neon copper-bearing Paraiba, among the scarcer tourmaline colors.
gemstone
Tube Agate
A chalcedony agate containing hollow or mineral-filled tubes that appear as rods, circles, or pipes depending on the angle of the cut.
gemstone
Indian Agate
An affordable multicolored banded and mossy chalcedony from India, common in tumbled stones, beads, and meditation pieces.
gemstone
Lake Michigan Agate
Glacially deposited banded agates found along Lake Michigan beaches, small waterworn pebbles with concentric red and grey banding.
gemstone
Yellow Agate
A yellow to golden banded chalcedony colored by iron, ranging from natural honey tones to dyed commercial stones.
gemstone
Thunderegg Agate
A nodular rhyolite geode-like ball whose plain exterior hides a star-shaped agate or chalcedony core when cut.
gemstone
Sweetwater Agate
A translucent Wyoming chalcedony filled with delicate black manganese dendrites that resemble tiny ferns, moss, or starbursts.
gemstone
Seam Agate
Agate that forms in flat cracks or veins of host rock rather than rounded nodules, producing straight, parallel banding.
gemstone