Tin Oxide Gemstones & Minerals

The following is a list of Tin Oxide gems and minerals listed in our database. Click the pictures to get full data, click the X to remove the gem from the list.

Rutile

Rutile: Rutile with anatase and brookite is a trimorph of titanium oxide in the Rutile group.
It forms characteristic slender prismatic striated lengthways, variably terminated and often geniculate twinned crystals of the tetragonal system. Elbow- and heart-shaped (geniculated) twin crystals are common. It is hard, heavy, fragile, with perfect cleavage. It has a metallic to adamantine lustre an (read full)

Plasma Chalcedony

Plasma Chalcedony: Plasma is a massive, semitransparent, leek to dark green variety of Chalcedony (a microcrystalline variety of the Quartz group), microgranular or microfibrous, consisting of speckles of red or brownish-red jasper, resembling drops of blood. It is translucent to opaque, may be dark green to bright-green, apple-green, or nearly emerald-green, containing microfibrous of actinolite, frequently fleck (read full)

Heliodor Beryl

Heliodor Beryl: Heliodor is a gem variety of Beryl with golden-yellow or light yellow-green color. In many cases heliodor is also used to include gems known as Golden beryl/ Golden emerald, though not to be confused with gold beryl. It is sometimes hard to establish a dividing line between heliodor and golden beryl. Its main characteristic is its color, which is the yellow-green of olive oil. Its pigment is uran (read full)

Hematite

Hematite: Hematite is considered the most important Iron Ore mineral. Its crystals appear as reasonably thick. They may be tabular, or rhombohedral, and occasionally prismatic or pyramidal. Tabular crystals may form as rosettes, when they are called "iron roses." It also occurs as massive, compact, columnar, fibrous, reniform, botryoidal, stalactitic, foliated, and granular. When hematite forms in a renif (read full)

Spinel

Spinel: Spinel is an extensive group of minerals in which magnesium may be replaced with iron, zinc, and above all, manganese. The hardness and fine colors of gem quality spinel, known as Noble Spinel, set it apart as a gem material from other types of spinel. It normally occurs as distinct octahedral crystals, as clusters also of octahedral habit, or as characteristic twins. The crystals are often iso (read full)

Sard

Sard: Sard is the uniformly colored red-brown or brownish-yellow variety of Chalcedony, which in turn is a microcrystalline variety of Quartz. There is no strict separation between sard and cornelian/carnelian (red to reddish brown), because they are both chalcedonies found in the same deposits and were employed for the same objects. The tints of a sard stone may be reddish or orange. Good-quality mat (read full)

Fire Agate

Fire Agate: Fire Agate is a term applied to much of the variety of chalcedony that occurs as botryoidal, consisting of crystals of minute platy inclusion of an iron mineral goethite or limonite minerals over the layers of chalcedony, producing a vivid rainbow containing every color in the spectrum, an iridescent, fire-like appearance, with careful polishing away of the brown outside layers. When polished, it (read full)

Padparadscha

Padparadscha: Padparadschah is the name given to the orange-yellow sapphire, a gem variety of Corundum. It is also differentiated from the yellow sapphire, and is one of the rarest varieties of corundum. The main sapphire-bearing rocks are marble, basalt, or pegmatite. It is mined mainly from alluvial deposits or deposits formed by weathering, rarely from the primary rock. It usually occurs in placer deposit (read full)

Cassiterite

Cassiterite: Cassiterite may form as short or slender prismatic, or bipyramidal, elbow-shaped crystals. It has a crystal surface reflecting light as in a mirror. They may occur as massive, granular, botryoidal, and reniform. When found in granular, banded, fibrous masses, it looks like wood. When found in groups of large bright crystals, it is usually called "diamond tin." A red variety cut for collectors is k (read full)

Taaffeite

Taaffeite: Taaffeite is a very rare beryllium magnesium aluminum mineral. No other mineral has both beryllium and magnesium in its composition. It is one of the few gems to be discovered as a faceted stone instead of a rough, as most gemstones are. Rarely cut as a gem, taaffeite looks like a mauve-colored spinel, and its absorption spectrum is similar to it. But gemologists know they've found taaffeite when (read full)

Rhodonite

Rhodonite: Rhodonite is a silicate of manganese-iron-magnesium, a mineral of the Pyroxene group, with a triclinic crystal system. It appears as rare tabular crystals, sometimes with rounded edges and wrinkled faces. It sometimes occurs as distinct, translucent to semiopaque crystals, but more often it is in compact, granular, ot crystalline masses of a patchy, pink, flesh red or brownish red color, often wi (read full)

Nephrite

Nephrite: Nephrite is a silicate of calcium, magnesium, and iron, containing fluorine and hydroxyl. It is an amphibole of the actinolite series. It occurs in all colors, also striped and spotted, but the most valuable color is green. The amphiboles of the tremolite-actinolite series usually occur as elongated, parallel, radiating, or even fibrous crystals; but the variety known as nephrite has a very compa (read full)

Ruby

Ruby: Ruby is the most valuable variety of Corundum. The color varies from fiery vermilion to violet red, but because rubies are pleochroic, different colors are also found in the same stone; bright or sometimes brick red in one direction, tending to carmine in the other. The color is also accompanied by marked fluorescence which is stimulated by ordinary, artificial light, and above all, by the ultra (read full)

Sapphire

Sapphire: Sapphire is the blue variety of Corundum. Sapphires can be a very dark blue, to the point of seeming dense and blackish from a distance, sometimes accompanied by a blue to dull green pleochroism, which is only visible from the side in cut stones. They may also be a strong, but not too bright blue, easily recognizable from a distance, this being the real color. Other possibilities are light, usual (read full)

Coral

Coral: Corals are the supporting framework of small polyps. Each coral polyp, a tiny marine animal that lives in enormous colonies, extracts calcium carbonate from the sea and exudes it through their bases to build a protective home around and above itself. Each generation of polyps dies in its protective home and each succeeding generation builds on top of its predecessor. They precipitate calcareous m (read full)

Grossular Garnet

Grossular Garnet: Grossular is a nesosilicate in the Garnet group, with an isometric crystal system. Together with uvarovite and andradite, the three are known as the "ugrandite garnets," an isomorphous series of calcium garnet minerals. It appears with dodecahedral or trapezohedral crystals of various colors; normally characterized by a green color, but also may be colorless, pale green or milky when pure, cinnam (read full)