Coming up! I bought a parcel of 200 mixed cabochons do you didn’t have to. Let’s see what’s real and what’s fake!

I’ve sorted the cabochons into a few categories:
- Real stones
- Dyed agates
- Composites
- Fake turquoise / dyed howlite
- Completely artificial

First up, majority of stones were real, consisting of:
Sodalite
Various quartz types (rose, agate, carnelian)
Snowflake obsidian
Rhodonite
Banded Iron Formation
Tiger Eye
Chrysoprase
Microcline
and some other hard stones

Next up, ALL THE TURQUOISE IS DYED. Specifically they’re dyed howlite, in one pic I show you a comparison of howlite regular and dyed. The color is cheap and will come off on a napkin with rubbing alcohol

Then we have various types of dyed quartz, the color also comes off some of it with rubbing alcohol. Some of the aventurine may be legit but it’s hard to tell

Next are the composites, which are made of ground up and glued together bits of actual stone

Here are the completely artificial ones, the blue I think is just glass, the others are sparkly random things

Last is this thing, which I suspect is glass but looks pretty

In conclusion, out of the parcel of cabochons, 25% were altered or fake

PS: Here's a better pic of the last one since a few people suggested it might be moss agate. I'm pretty sure it's fibers in glass to make it look like moss agate, it's kinda clever.