- Appearance – Natural Malachite has a unique and identifiable look, it only has THREE shades of green & NO BLACK.
- Color stability – Can the color be removed?
- Price – If it looks too good to be true it probably is but sometimes you are able to get it in second hand shops for a steal! It just depends if the person selling it, knows what they have or not.
- Use the test methods in the beginning of this Article for testing your Malachite.
Different ways to tell differences in your malachite by looking:
- Genuine malachite is very cold, very heavy and feels hard. It is heavier than solid glass or plastic, and feels ‘dense’ and ice cold when held and touched. The striped patterns are called ‘banding’. Genuine malachite is not uniform in its patterns and colours; you’ll find circles, speckles and thin to thick parts in the patterns, and dark to light-green hues.
- Fake malachite comes in many forms. Plastic fake malachite is easy to spot as it’s lightweight and warm to the touch. However, fake-malachite made from glass, is cold and hard to the touch like genuine malachite, but because it’s glass it will warm up in your hand much quicker (real malachite won’t warm up much at all; it remains cold – this applies to a lot of gemstones by the way).
Malachite Stone Combinations
Genuine pure Malachite is always green. So called ‘red malachite’ is simply a fancy name for a type of red jasper. Multi coloured ‘malachite’ is cheap dyed Howlite. However, malachite does occur naturally with a rich blue mineral called Azurite, which can create a stunning mix of azure and green colours; these genuine gemstones will be labelled as ‘Azurite malachite’ and are quite collectable.
Video That Shows Differences in Malachites on the Market
The Enchanted Realm 