Moldavite

Raw moldavite, sold in the UK as single named pieces, each one weighed, photographed on its own and priced by exact weight. The piece in the image is the piece that arrives.

Moldavite is natural glass, thrown out molten by a meteorite impact in what is now Bavaria around fifteen million years ago and scattered across a single strewn field. It is found in gravel and sand beds in southern Bohemia and Moravia, with only minor amounts anywhere else. There is nowhere else on earth it comes from.

Every piece in the Grove came out of the Chlum sand mine in South Bohemia.

How to tell genuine raw moldavite

Texture, not colour. Real moldavite carries a deeply sculpted skin, full of pits and grooves dissolved into the glass by groundwater across millions of years. Green bottle glass is easy to make and copies are common, so the surface is what tells you.

Held to the light it is usually semi transparent, and you can often pick out fine thread like inclusions of lechatelierite inside it, a silica glass that never fully melted in the impact. Manufactured glass tends to show round, evenly spread bubbles instead.

Rough moldavite is also matt rather than glossy. Dealers sometimes rub a trace of oil on a piece to show the true colour, and once it is washed and dried it goes back to dull. A rough piece that arrives shining and stays shining is worth a second look.

That is why every listing here is photographed close enough for you to see the surface for yourself rather than being asked to take it on trust.

Is moldavite only found in the Czech Republic

Effectively yes. The Central European strewn field is the only one that produced moldavite, and almost all of it lies in southern Bohemia and Moravia. There are much smaller recorded occurrences in Upper Austria, Germany and a very little in southwestern Poland. In commercial terms, if a piece is genuine it came out of the Czech Republic.