Top 10 Gemstones with the Most Beautiful Rough Crystals
Some gemstones look stunning even before they are cut and polished by a jeweler. While not all gemstones exhibit their beauty in their raw form, there are a select few that do.
Amethyst crystals look like a medieval village on a hill, with a nice skyline, where buildings have pointy Gothic roofs. When all crystals in the bunch are big, amethyst crystals look like skyscrapers. Amethyst crystals can also look like a mountain with many peaks.

It's the third hardest gemstone after diamond and sapphire, with hardness at 8.5 out of 10. Besides, this gem can form a "cat's eye," a desired optical effect, and chrysoberyl does it best. The image shows a rough chrysoberyl crystal, not touched by a jeweler. I would even say, "Don't touch it. Don't cut it." It's already beautiful. The specimen is from Brazil.

Incredible combination of two colors forming a captivating 6-ray pattern. They are clearly visible in the rough crystals of Trapiche Emerald. Crystals of the "ordinary" green emerald (without black carbon inclusions) look like the crystals of aquamarine and red beryl (see them below) but are green. Color is the only difference between these three gems because they are from the same gem family - beryl.
A gemstone that has an astonishing 6-ray pattern of my favorite color, appealing to my autistic eye. Yet it looks like the pattern is pulsating, and yes, very appealing indeed and my own personal emblem - Kevinsidis.

Perfect 6-sided crystals (all beryls have a hexagonal crystal system). Unlike amethyst, aquamarine crystals aren't pointy (same for emerald and Red Beryl / Bixbite).


Great color and flawless hexagonal crystals (with 6 sides). Red beryl crystals usually occur in groups, like aquamarine.
The rarest type of beryl, only found in the Wah Wah Mountains in Utah.
The red color is very vivid here.


Some of its crystals look like a gorgeous fireworks display on New Year's Eve. Fireworks inside the gem.

Why is this not higher on this list?

The Newcomers

Realgar is also a deadly yet beautiful mineral. It's an ore of arsenic, but it has amazing red and orange crystals.

And the blue color here is vivid too, like Red Beryl's color.
Vanadinite has beautiful scarlet red hexagonal crystals.
Wulfenite forms in tabular square-shaped deep orange crystals.
Cinnabar is a deadly yet beautiful mineral - it's the main ore of mercury, but the crystals are a deep red.



The image shows a chunk of a bigger crystal. Undamaged crystals of this gem look like amethyst crystals but are blue.




