Hell - n - ite

Caveat Emptor

When my weekly news magazine arrived today, an ad on the inside cover for jewelry made from Helenite caught my eye. The gems featured in the jewelry were a beautiful green color that would rival the finest emerald.

(The photo is NOT from the ad or the vendor who placed it.)

I struggle to fairly and accurately identify the rocks I sell from my dad’s collection. I often have no clue whatsoever about what kind of rocks they are, but I tell people if I don’t know what it is. (See my effort to identify what I’m now calling “Yellowcat Bark” for example.) I have never claimed to be a great rockhound. That was my dad. And he’s not around to help me out now.

As I browse rock sales sites on the web to try to figure it all out, I have to conclude that there are a lot of people out there who just don’t care about the truth as long as they can get some of your money. The ad for Helenite is a great example.

A close reading of the full page ad didn’t suggest anywhere that Helenite was anything but a natural gemstone. It DID tell you in rapturous terms that it was the result of the massive explosion of Mount St. Helens in Washington State. But the casual reader might easily assume that it was created by the volcanic heat and pressure of the volcano and was therefore a precious gem.

It wasn’t and it isn’t.

As it turned out, Helenite is a real thing, but also an artificial rock. The example of “Fordite” comes to mind. It’s a real thing too. The accumulated years of overspray painting cars on automobile assembly lines produced a beautiful plastic of the dried paint that once could be pried off of pipes. (No more. They don’t paint cars that way now.)

Helenite was discovered accidentally by workers using a high temperature acetylene torch that melted the ash deposited by the explosion of Mount St. Helens. When the resulting glass cooled, it turned out to have just the right chemical composition to turn a beautiful green color. It didn’t take long for entrepreneurs to start manufacturing the stuff using the tons of ash available. You just need a furnace capable of reaching 2700 degrees Fahrenheit. Helenite is also available in red and blue.

But it’s just glass, folks! The Mohs hardness is only 5 to 5.5 and it will chip and scratch easily. Agate, by comparison, has a Mohs hardness of 6.5 to 7 and most is tough. It’s not that hard to manufacture green, red, or blue glass. (Obsidian is just glass too. But it is produced by volcanic heat and pressure and has unique properties that make it a better gemstone. Besides, I haven’t seen rock sellers try to sell it with misleading ads.)

This is why governments regulate stuff. There will always be someone willing to make a buck selling junk or worse. One legitimate role of government is to require some honesty in commerce. The ad in my magazine didn’t contain any direct lies. It just encourages the reader to jump to a false idea.

Anyway … I felt like calling it out because it seems to me that it is a lie of “omission”. Caveat Emptor!