The Gleamite desk

Every page here is built around the same discipline the app enforces: a name is a claim, and a claim comes with the check that would falsify it. We do not publish “this is jade”; we publish what nephrite’s hardness and fracture look like, where the figure comes from, and what result on an unglazed tile would prove the claim wrong.

Three working rules produce most of what you read on this site.

Every physical property carries its source. Hardness values, streak colors and specific gravities are taken from USGS materials and standard mineralogical references, named per page, with the date we read them. Where common lore disagrees with the reference — and in rockhounding it often does — the reference wins and the lore is mentioned as lore.

We do not claim tests we did not run. The hardness, streak, fizz and UV checks described on these pages are the ones we run ourselves on ordinary finds. What we have not done — bench-testing competitor apps on a controlled photo set, assaying ore samples — is stated as not done, and claims about other companies’ apps are read from their own store pages on a stated date.

Identification is not appraisal, and the pages say so. Any page touching value tells you when the honest answer is a gemological lab or an assay office, and what that step costs relative to being wrong. The app follows the same rule: it names species and lists checks; it does not price stones.

The search figures that decide which pages exist come from Ahrefs, US market, measured on 7 August 2026. Where a page targets a phrase we have not measured, it says so rather than inventing a number.