Editorial: The Story of Tibet Andesine

Part 2 of our Story of Oregon Sunstone

Just as Marconi did to Tesla, there has always been someone looking at someone else’s success and finding a way to steal that success. Whether it be an idea, a design, or a product, it does not matter. Anyone who comes up with a successful idea or a profitable product is always at risk of someone coming in to steal their idea, their design, or their product. The same holds true for the Oregon Sunstone Miners. After 20 years of extremely hard work to extract the Oregon Sunstone from the basaltic rock and create a viable market in the gemstone industry, a Chinese company named AndeGem took a serious look at the growing success of the Oregon Sunstone market. AndeGem decided to find a way to cash-in on the product for themselves by creating an artificially treated copper-bearing felspar that they could use to take over the market share that the Oregon Sunstone miners had worked so hard to develop. So, they paid a scientist in Beijing, China to find a way to artificially diffuse copper into large feldspar crystals, thereby duplicating what the Oregon Sunstone miners were digging out of the ground.

AndeGem’s plan was ambitious. They needed a large supply of feldspar crystals, which they found in Casa Grande, Mexico. They imported over 30,000 kilos of Mexican yellow feldspar to China, where they artificially infused it with copper, creating a new copper-bearing feldspar. They marketed this as a new gemstone from a supposed new source in Tibet, which they called Tibet Andesine. Their marketing was so successful that the gemstone became the official gemstone of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a testament to the scale of their operations.

AndeGem’s next move was to partner with major television shopping networks to achieve global distribution of their ‘Tibet Andesine’ gemstone. They found willing partners in Jewelry Television and Direct Shopping Network, among others. Jewelry Television alone sold over $100 million of ‘Tibet Andesine’ to over 135,000 customers. The impact of this supposedly new copper-bearing feldspar from Tibet on the Oregon Sunstone miners was catastrophic. The Chinese company was selling this artificially treated ‘Tibet Andesine’ at very low prices, and without disclosure that it was artificially treated. In fact, just the opposite. It was being touted on all the television shopping channels as all-natural, a brand-new gemstone discovery verified and certified by the American Gem Trade Association Gem Trade Lab, among others. An example of one of the AGTA certificates can be seen by clicking here: AGTA GTC. This exploitation of the Oregon Sunstone miners’ hard work and the marketing tactics used by AndeGem had a profound effect on the industry.

Of course, the problem was that it was all a hoax, a fraud. However, since consumers trusted the television shopping networks, which claimed the material to be all-natural, sales were good. Money was coming in. And the Oregon Sunstone mining operations were virtually wiped out due to their inability to compete with the low prices of this new copper-bearing sunstone from Tibet.

In 2007, we had many consumers approach the ISG office asking us to get involved in investigating this new Tibet andesine. There were many rumors that it was not natural but instead artificially colored. I explained that the ISG was not a research school and that we did not have the resources to take on something of this magnitude. This went on for almost a year. Consumers and even some Oregon Sunstone miners approached me about assisting them because they could not get help elsewhere. This was despite going to places like the Jewelers Vigilance Committee, which gave them the “bums-rush” out the door and refused to even look at the situation. Finally, with so many of our ISG students and graduates requesting that I look at this, I finally agreed.

Research

Having donated quite a few study specimens to the Geology department of the University of Texas here in San Antonio, I knew that I could go to them and ask them about their view of a copper-bearing andesine feldspar. The head of the department just laughed when he heard that question for the simple reason that andesine does not occur in these big clear crystals. It just does not happen in nature. You can see a specimen at left. We would find out later that a flux used in the process in China to get the copper inside the crystals was heavy in certain elements that caused the felspar to alter properties to test as andesine and that it was never really a true andesine.

I also set out to collect as many Tibet andesine as I could from as many television shopping channels and Ebay as I could find in order to test the material. It did not take long to find the image you see below, which is what we call the red dagger image. This image, along with LA-ICP-MS and XRF advanced testing, proved that this material was, in fact, artificially colored by diffusing copper into what was actually the Mexican felspar.

I wrote a report on my findings which was published in Colored Stone magazine, which blew the lid off of the whole affair. As you can imagine, exposing a hoax of this magnitude that included so many major players in the industry came with a cost. While consumers in the Oregon Sunstone industry applauded the work of the ISG and Colored Stone magazine, those that were involved in perpetrating the hoax (on several levels) sought retaliation and revenge, which continues to this day. The rest of that story exposes a very dark side of the international gemstone industry that many did not want to be exposed. It is too long and too in-depth to continue in this newsletter but is available free on PDF, at the link at the bottom of this editorial.

The purpose today is to inform the industry that this fake Tibet andesine material is still out there being sold as natural. Jewelers need to understand how to identify the material and know that it is, in fact, still in the market.

The image below is one of the most important from all of our research because it tells virtually the entire story in one picture. Here, you can see the kind of color formation that happens when the artificial copper infusion goes down the growth lamella of the felspar crystal. You see these lines of more intense red colors running through the stone. This is very classic for the artificially treated felspar material sold as Tibet andesine.

The image also shows a white crust material that survived the faceting process of this stone. We found this material on almost every specimen of rough Tibet andesine that we tested, including those provided to us by the people who supposedly went to the mine on an expedition to confirm the authenticity of a Tibet andesine mine. After the ISG had elemental analysis done on the material, it was found to be sodium silicate, sometimes called water glass. It is used in the treatment process of gemstones. We also found high concentrations of copper in this material. We also found traces of molybdenum. For gemstone crystals that supposedly are volcanic in origin and spent millions of years traveling to an alluvial fan deposit, these should not have been on the rough crystals. Particularly since molybdenum does not occur naturally in basaltic rock. Molybdenum crucibles are used to treat gemstones, which accounts for the traces of molybdenum in this crusty material.

It should be noted that the National Gem Testing Center of China went to this claimed mine location reported by the expedition and found no deposits of felspar but rather salted ground with crystals spread out on the surface and a warehouse full of treated gemstones. Despite the fact that two different expeditions, supported variously by Jewelry Television, the GIA, and others, the expeditions turned out to be hoaxes, and no one was ever held responsible for that. An image from one of those expeditions is seen here.

Let us look at some other methods of identifying this fake Tibet andesine.

Below, you see another example from our early research showing the mottled coloring, and the results from the artificial infusion of copper in this Felspar crystal. This and the image above demonstrate how the coloring is very different from what the natural Oregon Sunstone looks like and can make the identification of the artificially treated andesine quite easy.

Another method is to use an immersion cell. Natural oxidation of copper in an Oregon Sunstone follows the normal path, which is to oxidize at the place where the oxygen meets the copper from the outside inward. Just the opposite is true with many of the Tibet andesine. Due to a pretreatment that occurs before the diffusion process happens, the interior of these stones often have a strange green color. The positioning of these colors is opposite of what would happen in nature. This is another “tell” of the fake Tibet andesine.

Another important test is fluorescence. During our research, we found that diffused material tends to be highly fluorescent in the long-wave UV, as seen below.

Finally, magnification makes it easy to see the very strange formation of the colors inside the fake Tibet andesine. The green coloring surrounding the lamella that are often full of copper diffusion material. It is sometimes easier to see in an immersion cell, which can be easily made from a frosted plastic cup and simple tap water, which I used for our research. The features are that easy to identify.

The bottom line is Tibet andesine is a hoax. It demonstrates just how easy it is to pull off a multimillion-dollar fraud in the gemstone industry if one has enough money and enough connections to the big organizations to pull it off. I will warn everyone that getting involved in this level of consumer protection is costly on many levels. I knew that before we got into this, which is why it took almost a year before I finally agreed to take a look at the material and report on it. I knew that many people would be happy that somebody finally took action, but I also knew that those who were benefiting from the hundreds of millions of dollars of sales would exact their revenge, which they have done over the last 12 years. As I told one of the ISG graduates, who was involved in the research.: “Prepare to be loved and then prepared to be hated.” Those words turned out to be prophetic.

I hope this editorial view has helped people understand the facts behind this so-called Tibet Andesine…and perhaps gain a better understanding of the gemstone industry in general.

These are my opinions, I welcome you to send in yours.

Get the full saga of Tibet andesine including the 4 year courtroom battle the exposed this gemstone hoax. Click the image below for your free copy on PDF.