Choosing Your Right Crystal Quartz Stone Sphere

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Geological spheres come in many combinations of colours from clear quartz (glassy), metallic, sandy to opaque marble. Price varies from sphere composites, scarcity, size, quality and workmanship.

Quartz sphere are composed of minerals and the colour of the sphere is determined by the element that the mineral was fused upon during their formation under the earth. For instance, primarily purple from iron/manganese, blue/green from copper and pink from manganese, brown/red from iron composite. Other form of mineral may show uniform colour such as gold and silver.

Generally, quartz (glassy) ones are harder (higher hardness) and thus less likely to get scratched during cleaning. But they do crack if knock against hard surface. Not to get confused with Calcite/Citrine transparency which are soft calcium and easily scratched. Another difference is that quartz is smooth and clear while the other is kind of fuzzy.

Availability of Mineral Sphere Sold Locally in Singapore

While there are many exotic mineralized crystal available for sale in the market, few comes in spherical form as they are either too small to be polished, break easily during polish or too expensive for design such as gems. On the Internet, you can see many more types of quartz, jasper, obsidians and marble sphere but locally here in Singapore, the variety are much lesser. Spheres sold in shop here are normally AA, A, B and C. Grading is determine by clarify, colour and minimal crack or inclusion; not to confused with hair like crystalline in spheres of phantoms. Most crystal spheres are A to B grade, however lower grades can be found in open stores.

Things to Note

Quartz, Calcite and Marble are natural form from earth and there will always be inclusion (cracks) and impurities in them, especially the bigger ones. You are likely to find quite clean sphere within 2 inch in size. Don’t worry about these cracks and impurities; it is these that give the sphere a different look. Do you know that no two spheres are alike? Of course, do expect a much higher price tag for this so call perfect sphere (5 – 10 times).

Impurities can form beautiful designs within the quartz sphere such as rutile which is a crystalline hair growth within the sphere during formation, creating what is known as phantoms.

Beliefs: Crystal/Quartz spheres are being told of their power to channel spiritual power and improve luck in Feng Shui. I would advise limiting your belief and consider them as item to help you concentrate. People who likes stationary artifacts will appreciate sphere better because they don’t move or talk. There are always those exceptional instance where paranormal abilities be displayed in some stones but not necessary the same range of stones. I have directly heard from some who experienced good and bad occurrences after getting a black obsidian; no explanation for that, if things don’t feel right for you, get rid of it soon.

Any obvious changes would account them as events caused by a change in the person’s behavior because of practices like quit smoking or the presence of an item attracts attention like a large crystal feature at the door. One should always practice logical discretion when you are being approached by someone selling supernatural rocks to you at cut throat cost. If it is that powerful, then why doesn’t the seller keep it? At times, they adopt peer pressure to entice you to part with your money. So beware!

Therefore do buy the sphere of your choice within your limit and enjoy what you buy, then the spiritual power will be shown. Buying one and regret after looking at your bills is certainly not a good start. Quartz spheres are sometimes being poke fun by your friends and partner as stupidly; well as long as you like it … who cares. Who says paying S$60,000 for a piece of paper license was logical anyway. So don’t get upset or quarrel over such tiny matter, it just proved that attention has been created. See FAQ for more comments

Spotting Artificially Made Spheres

There are shops selling luminous sphere when exposed to light. They are artificially made plastic, so do not be talk into believing they are real. But I must admit that some are made with good quality and feels naturally heavy; not sure what they have added into it. Though the plastic can be hard, they felt like plastic and warm. They are not expensive, so you can buy them as ornaments.

Glass made sphere are much lighter and tends to have bubbles and swirl in them. When you hold them, you will feel that the weight simply spread evenly. Natural sphere has different weight spread but it takes some practice to feel the difference.

· Clear Quartz

Better known and crystal ball. These are colourless quartz sphere with natural cracks formed inside them; too often sold as substitutes by glass sphere. Once way to differentiate clear quartz from glass is the bubble and swirls formed in glass. In addition, glass sphere are much lighter than quartz about 20% less per size. A perfect clear quartz carries a much higher price tag and a 5 inch perfect clear quartz sphere is uncomfortably costly. Natural quartz sphere will always have natural crack formation within, it’s a matter of how bad the cracks extends to through the surface. A clearer sphere with lesser distortion will be more expensive.

Some clear quartz have smoky tint in them, called smoky quartz.

* Digital photos tend to have richer and deeper coloration. So simply give them a 30% reduction in color for actual look.

The left sphere is a very clear near perfect smoky quartz, while on the right, a grade A clear quartz.

· Amethyst Sphere

Amethyst Quartz comes in purple (less transparent) or violet quartz form and the quality is determined by the richness in colour and the transparency. Most businessmen like to place these purple crystal rocks in auspicious place. DO NOT subject amethyst to heat and long exposure to sunlight as it will loss it purple colour to brownish.

Some amethyst comes in very dark form called dark amethyst and they are simply very dark, unless you use light, you can see the purple. I have only seen them locally in smaller size of 3 inch below.

Calcite

Comes is various semi-transparent colours from yellow, bluish, brown, honey, brownish orange, greenish, white and others opaque multi combination of orange, white, black and reddish. Note that calcite is really soft and easily scratched, most importantly DO NOT wash them under tap water and soap detergent. It will cause the sphere to lose the shine in no time; beyond hope. I have tried recommendation of lemon and vinegar without any success. I am not sure why tap water causes cloudy surface; probably due to the chlorine?

Calcite sphere is much cheaper (around S$10+/kg) than the rest and the most common yellow marble are those placed in water fountains. Differentiation between clear calcite and quartz is that calcite have rougher and somewhat stickier surface.

Blue Calcite is rather rare here. This is a nice 6+ inch sphere	White Calcite	Green Calcite	Yellow Golden Calcite
Honey Calcite	5” Darker Green Calcite

This unique Brown Calcite has a different upper and lower halves structure. One side has a honey cone look while the other denser end.

Rose Quartz Sphere

Somehow, it’s the catchy name given that rose quartz sphere was named instead of rose sphere. These are pink to pink orange/white quartz sphere. Depending on the way that its being polished, stars streaks can be seen under strong light which gave them then name star rose quartz. Orangey pink is rather pink with brownish impurities but this makes them special because one hardly finds natural orange colour quartz. Off course, lighting makes the difference.

Orange color rose quartz.   

Fluorite Sphere

Easily confused with quartz, they do come in quartz like polished surface, in green and purple. Most commonly sold are in green follow by a mixture of green and purple. The observable different between fluorite and the others is the layered band of colour within the semi transparent layers. Some fluorite comes with multiple bands of green and purple while other with different coloured sides. Another way to differentiate against amethyst is the water stains like marks on the surface. Cleaning fluorite with tap water leave permanent stain marks on them. Though a little unsightly but not as bad as calcite.

I have seen blue fluorite on ebay but not sure if they are really blue. Some fluorite comes with rusty inclusions, probably from oxidized iron making them special.

Hematite

These spheres look like grayish metal sphere just that they don’t rust like metal, so it’s the most easiest to differentiate. In oldies kung fu movies, two spheres are used by master juggling in their palm as ti dan zong. Personally, I find Hematite sphere quite useful for people who want to exercise their finger and palm, though you will need some practicing to rotate the two spheres in your palm. You can wash hematite with water and soap.

Unless the sphere is very small 1-2 inches, there will always be some holes on the surface but little factures. Not to be confused with steel ball, Hematite is grey silver and not as shiny as steel.

Obsidians

These are quick cooled volcanic rock contacting with water forming very smooth opaque, mostly black and green colour. Most polished obsidian spheres have circles on either side which look like eyes. The darker spheres will require direct light to see the eye while lighter one is obvious.

By size, black/green obsidians are quite expensive second to quartz and the more eye the costlier. Other rarer obsidians have spackles on them due to bubble formation. Because of the dark and uniformity, black obsidian can be faked with glass or plastic.

There are other colours of obsidian from the Internet but I have yet seen one locally, perhaps might have mistaken for others.           

Tiger Eye and Tiger Iron

These spheres have a golden feathery look when fully polished and reflective golden shades or chatoyant formed by fibrous crystalline (chalcedony). For those who know cat eye jewelry that’s what its look and feels like; a streak of reflective shine likes eyes of the cat. Tiger eye spheres have brown and gold reflective bands; others have lacquered woody look. Why called tiger eye, is probably due to the eye of the sphere and the golden brown hairy texture giving it a tiger eye look. More complex combinations are those with multiple circular eyes and different colour due to impurities.

Tiger Iron seemed rarely here and they comprise of hematite, jasper and tiger eye, thus have reddish eye, golden chatoyant and metallic feel. An even rarer form is the blue tiger iron with the bluish chatoyant look rather than gold, off course will fetch are higher price. In general, tiger iron is much heavier than tiger eye. 

This is a man made fiber optic sphere giving a nice cat eye effect under light. Fiber optic sphere comes in many nice solid colours and since they are artificial, mostly are perfect sphere. You can see more at http://www.therockshed.com/spheres2.html

· Dyed Howlite

Howlite is calcium rock that is white or grey. They do come with beautiful natural veins on their surface which gives them a nice web look. But Howlite is easily dyed as it is porous and good absorbent. Thus many try faking dyed Howlite as expensive counterpart Turquoise. So beware when you see a large sphere 4-5” labeled as Chinese turquoise. Turquoises don’t come in tens of dollar for such size.

One way to spot a turquoise besides the unusual in large spherical size is Turquoise is smooth like polish pebble and has lesser veins than Howlite. In addition, Howlite has a rougher and more like formica used on cabinet feel and one dead give away is when you see white chalk in crevices of the sphere. If the sphere is in bead form, well … buy from a reputable shop. Nevertheless faux (false) turquoise does make an excellent substitution. Take them as dyed Howlite. In fact I don’t find Howlite sold commonly here.                   Blue dyed 4” sphere

· Jasper Sphere

Jasper is by far the most variety in colour and pattern against quartz, mostly opaque and looks like marble. And because of their wide location, from land to coastal line, Jasper inherited many design. I like Ocean Jasper due to it dotty pattern and Ocean Jasper got its name as it is located in sea coast.

Jasper always got the old ancient looks and comes in mixture of red, black, white, green and brown.

There are richer colours in ocean jaspers, search other websites and you will see more. http://www.therockshed.com/spheres4.html

 White Grey Ocean Jasper

· Malachite

A very rich green with beautiful black swirl pattern on the surface; better known locally as Phoenix stone or Kong Que Shi. However many of the malachite sphere here are artificially compressed by smaller pieces of green mineral which I don’t know what they are. Genuine green malachite is smooth with nature swirl or rounded patterns, while the processed one consisted of many small pieces of stones.

· Other Sphere Found on Sale in Local Shops

This is a glass smelted cherry red sphere. You don’t find red coloured sphere here, so have to settle with glass version. Glass sphere are significantly lighter and feels warmer.	This is a very heavily sediment fluorite which I bought from a second hand store. Perhaps due to the impurities, it’s rather heavy against others by size	Aragonite Sphere, not commonly sold here. This once is around 6 inches

 This is clear crystal with silver lined rutile grown in it.

 This is a nice green Aventurine sphere with speckles of sandy crystal.

 I saw one of this Sand Stone Sphere at the shop just above McDonald outside the China Town MRT station. Around 6” in size and should be still there.

· Pricing Guidelines

1. Sphere is a medium used in Feng Shui practices; don’t be fooled into paying hefty money for a normal sphere claiming to have special power. A typical 5 inches clear AA quartz sphere cost around S$1500-S$2000 locally. So a common grade B cannot be even near it, 60-70% less.

2. Beads bracelet may fetch higher price due to gems and design, always buy wisely and not because of special power as proclaimed. If you are not sure, go for reputable shops rather than off the street side or geomancer. Fortunately, most street stalls priced their goods reasonably by quality; this is contributed by the denser location of competitors. Anyone trying to pull tricks will be exposed soon. There will definitely be price difference depending on location, just like coffee drink. Unless you are buying commonly available ones, sometimes you simply need to pay for it or wait.

3. There are always those which are really expensive S$5000 and above and which around 9” and really special and they deserve the price or those which are made from gems or high quality jade. Others may price in the name of unique artistic marking on them. You decide.

4. Or you can go for S$80,000 a piece of 18 inch size of clear quartz.

· Guideline to Choosing the Right Sized Sphere

I must first emphasize that these are my view and should only be taken as reference where applicable but some are info are noteworthy or common sense. I have not seen spheres in other side of the earths hemisphere, thus will not know if different climates affects the look of the sphere. But do note that lighting affects the appealing of a sphere. Direct sunlight gives the best illumination, second by halogen. I don’t recommend white light.

1. Choose the right size and weight of the sphere for you. Especially for Hematite, picking an overly weighted sphere may actually put unnecessary stress on your wrist. In general, if you like gripping sphere while you think, you should be able to safely grip with the sphere downward.

2. Know the weight that your table or cabinet can withstand. This is absolutely importance to those who likes huge spheres. Dropping one of these on your floor will definitely leave an unforgettable crevice on your floor and also endangering people around.

3. Always be conscious when holding a heavy sphere, accidental slipping one over you can be painful experience. So for jugglers, keep your purchase within 4 inches.

4. Larger spheres will be more expensive because of freighting, and generally less perfect and more cracks. If you are looking for perfection, seek smaller version.

5. Some types of sphere do not come is larger than 2” version because of their scarcity. Just like Turquoise. If you do see one, be more careful as it might be a dyed one.

6. Quartz spheres are not child and pet safe. Store them in secure area and out of reach places. Use blu-tec to hold the sphere in place.

· Guideline to Choose the Right Sphere Type

I am not a gems specialist, geologist, historian or spiritual specialist. So these are my own views and take them as references only.

1. People say beauty lay on the eye of the beholder. And seller will tell you to pick the one that feels right and not by price. Half right. Yes you picked the one that you like but you do need to have an estimate of the price range, unless you have not financial constrains. Amethyst, Rose, Citrine and Pyrites are expensive (easily S$200 above for 4”) follow by Obsidian, while Calcites and Jasper tends to cheaper.

2. Depending on your mood at the time, look at the range of sphere colours and select your liking. Mood affects choice, for instance I find blue calms temper, red excites motivation, green relaxes, yellow/purple makes you feel fulfilled depending extro or introvert, pink for warm feeling, black for mysterious, clear for distress vision, silver/gold for wisdom, tiger for power and health. Other forms of colour composites for creativity building but will require a bigger sphere to be effective.

3. The size of the sphere depends on the location of viewing it. For short distant viewing (working table), a small one will suffice but across the room, a bigger one will be required. Don’t always assume that you will be holding it.

4. My personal advise is for ladies, don’t buy black obsidian, if you are die hard fans for black sphere, buy those with lighter colour or with very visible eyes. Black obsidian seems to be cold (because of black colour) and not suitable for female. Give lots of strong sunlight on your first purchase till it is warm.

5. Normally, no one sphere will meet the person’s need all the time. From time to time, according to mood, different sphere will be required.

6. Whether spheres can channel energy depending on your belief. I personally don’t believe but it does offer some form of psychological redirection or better known as re-channeling. Round reminds people to be flexible and more forgiving to yourself and others.

7. Some people believed that the minerals within the sphere gets absorbs into the body, thus improving health circulation. I am not sure about that and I doubt our skin is that permeable but I do believe that holding a heavy sphere with two arms do offer some form of arm exercise for couch potatoes. And rolling a weighed sphere over the body exercise the body mass. For example, Hematite is good for palm exercise because it is cool, more durable and also cheap.

· Maintaining

1. It is important to clean your sphere upon your first purchase especially the stand. With so many people touching or left long in the shop; lots of dirt and dust are left behind. Note that Calcite should not be wiped or rinse with tap water or it will cloud beyond repair. You can use blue glass cleaner but try on a small portion for few minutes for possible reaction. 

2. Next put your sphere in direct strong sunlight for 10 – 15min rotating every few minutes to clear away any bad negative energy trapped. You never know what bad chi is trapped in the sphere touched by many people in the shop. Do it once a month with good weather. Note that Amethyst should not be exposed to prolong heat, so a 3min will be sufficient. Black Obsidian should be sun more frequently as it is a magnet for negative chi.

3. Some minerals are afraid of dryness such as Opal, so don’t subject you stone to prolong sunlight. You can wrap a damp towel on the sphere once a while but not to calcites.

4. Do not subject the sphere to prolong dust as it causes dullness. Sometime cooking oil residue may cause mold to grow on the surface leaving permanent marking.

5. I use low abrasive liquid car wax and waxing cloth (important) to make the surface glossy like Auri. Always try on a small surface first for possible clouding. Do not use Rain-X alcohol based liquid to clean, they will eat into the stone and causes de-coloration.

6. Be considerate, don’t roll the sphere on the ground especially for those who stay in flats (multi-storey apartment), the sound will cause inconsiderable stress to your lower neighbors. Besides natural quartz sphere are too expensive to be used as game marbles.

Where to Buy in Singapore

I am not a wholesaler or supplier so does not know where you can get the best offer. But there are certain area in Singapore that you can find quartz and calcite spheres.

· Bencolen Centre at Bencolen Street, near Shi Ma Lu and Bugis Junction - Offers are wide range of supply at reasonable price. But do negotiate.

· Fu Lu Shou Complex - The place where Feng Shui or Geomacy shops resides. Not my first choice as they are more expensive. But good supply of natural unprocessed crystals.

· China Town – A few side stores do offer cheap calcite and quartz but not of a wide variety. One shop above McDonald at China Town MRT sells a wide variety of unprocessed crystal but priced higher.

· China Town Point – There is a shop with a large variety of crystals but price can be steeper.

· Golden Landmark – No spheres there but major in gems.

· Scattered in town centre – Mostly offered common clear quartz and smaller sized on. Generally you will find B to C grade.

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Written By: Darren Y (4th Sept’ 2005, Singapore)

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