I have a shamrock-green fluorite sphere that I find hard to stop looking at, once I start. Green is my favorite color anyway, and that one is a shade of green I find especially appealing. I also have a smaller, clear pale green flourite.that's clear other than one large rainbow veil in it.
My quartz collection consists of three natural and three reconstituted spheres, all of different sizes. Reconstituted, or smelted, or fused quartz is made by taking quartz powder and using it to "grow" perfectly clear quartz blocks in a lab. Then they are carved into shapes, including spheres, that are completely free of inclusions. Metaphysically, and chemically, it's still quartz, but financially, the items are more affordable. An optically clear medium- or large-sized natural quartz sphere will make a person's wallet go
.
One thing that drives me bonkers about trying to buy anything quartz these days, spheres or not, is that it's apparently acceptable to assess the quartz item's natural traits, give metaphysical names to them all, and then charge a premium for them. Thank goodness I bought the first of my spheres in 1991, before this type of pricing became the norm. It's about 2.5" in diameter, largely clear, and has a phantom quartz point in it that resembles a three-sided pyramid. If it were priced for sale in today's market, I probably couldn't afford it. It's really unfortunate that sellers are jacking up prices for a mineral that's one of the most common substances in nature. (SiO2).
It's also one of the reasons I'm window-shopping right now instead of making purchases. I'll see a photo of a very appealing item, but then I'll see the price tag and think, "Darn. That's for someone with deeper pockets than I've got", and go back to looking around. Oh, well. It's not like I have a need to greatly enlarge my current collection at the moment. I just like looking around to see if there's anything that suits both my preferences and my budget.
