Treasure Hunting

Several days ago I mentioned how plentiful and inexpensive Montana moss agate is, but these things don’t take away from the fact that this type of agate can be a beautiful stone and that it has a personality all its own.

I decided to try to capture some of the uniqueness of one particular piece of Montana moss agate in a digital drawing.  The particular specimen that the drawing was modeled on is very “earthy” looking with some gold tones in the translucent center.

Today I hope to get some photographs taken of a newer batch of ocean jasper that I recently acquired.  This latest sampling actually has some nice translucent samples as well.  Yes, even though it’s called ocean jasper, a lot of it is quite translucent like agate.  From what I have read, there was some discussion on whether to classify it as an agate or a jasper, but the name ocean jasper won out because of the orbicular patterns that are found on many of the specimens.  If you want to read up some more on this, check out this information.