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You have a feeling about your citrine (heat-treated amethyst). Let's find out if you're right.
The label says citrine. The stone is amethyst, or sometimes smoky quartz, that has been baked at roughly 400 to 550 degrees Celsius. The heat turns the violet iron colour centres orange-brown. It is still real quartz and the change is permanent, but the name is not honest unless the heating is disclosed.
A photo gets you close. The test below makes you sure.
127 crystals catalogued1,524 readings written, one per stone per sign113 guides in the Journal
Option one
Daylight, plain background, close enough to see the surface. Your phone strips the location off the photo before it ever leaves you.
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Option two
Pick the name off the label. I will give you the test for that stone, and the cheap thing it usually gets swapped for.
Your stone
Citrine (Heat-Treated Amethyst) is one of the ones people get sold wrong. So this is where the checking starts, not where it ends. Run the test below.
The test that settles it
First check it is quartz. It should scratch glass. Then read where the colour changes. A chalky white base that breaks into sharp orange at the tips means heated amethyst, every time. Natural colour never stops on a hard line like that. There is no other test you can run at home. The heat is permanent, and only the colour pattern gives it away.
Sold under the wrong name
The label says citrine. The stone is amethyst, or sometimes smoky quartz, that has been baked at roughly 400 to 550 degrees Celsius. The heat turns the violet iron colour centres orange-brown. It is still real quartz and the change is permanent, but the name is not honest unless the heating is disclosed.
Treatment
Amethyst, or sometimes smoky quartz, roasted at roughly 400 to 550 degrees Celsius. The heat turns the iron colour centres from violet to orange-brown. It is stable and permanent. This is not a fake mineral, it is a treated one, and it should be disclosed. Most shops do not disclose it. Treated material is worth much less than natural citrine. That is on the seller, not on you.
Confused with
Citrine natural, ametrine, smoky quartz, amber, orange calcite
quartz · SiO2 · Mohs 7
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A photo cannot feel weight or hardness. I tell you what the picture points to, then give you the test so you can be sure yourself.
Real citrine is rare. Almost everything sold under the name is amethyst, sometimes smoky quartz, baked in an oven until the purple turns orange-brown. It is still quartz. The change is permanent. It is not a fake rock, it is a treated one, and you should be told. In most shops you are not.
So the question here is not is it quartz. It is was it baked, and did anyone say so.
Baked amethyst leaves a mark nothing else copies. Look at a cluster from the side. The base is chalky and almost bleached white, then it jumps straight to burnt orange at the tips. Not a fade. A line. The heat pushes the colour to the points and leaves the body milky.
Real citrine does the opposite. It is a pale, even, slightly smoky yellow or warm honey, and that colour runs through the whole crystal. Its base looks glassy, not chalky. If your stone is deep red-orange, it went in an oven. The ground makes very little quartz that colour.
Baked geodes turn up as walls of short stubby points, all facing in, all the exact same burnt orange, bleached underneath and grey on the outside rind. That is how an amethyst geode is built, because that is what it was. Real citrine almost never grows as a wall of matching stubby points.
Look close and heated stones sometimes show a web of tiny shallow cracks on the surface from the temperature swing. That is proof of heating. Not seeing them proves nothing, because careful baking leaves no cracks at all.
Before reading the colour, make sure you are holding quartz. Citrine is SiO2 at hardness 7: it scratches window glass and a steel blade will not mark it. Calcite, which turns up as dyed orange tumbles, is hardness 3 and a copper coin will scratch it. Amber is hardness 2 to 2.5, far lighter in the hand, and warm to the touch. Glass is around 5.5, carries bubbles and a mould seam, and often has a suspiciously perfect even colour.
The honest limit: no consumer test distinguishes heated citrine from natural citrine except colour distribution. There is no scratch, streak or torch test for it. Laboratories use infrared and trace-element analysis. What you can do is read the base, the colour boundary and the price.
Ametrine is real and honest: a single Bolivian quartz crystal with a natural purple half and a natural yellow half, divided by a sharp straight boundary along a growth plane. If the two colours blur into each other in a swirl, treat it as heated or as two stones joined.
Smoky quartz shades toward brown-grey rather than orange, and irradiated smoky sold as citrine tends to look muddy. Orange calcite is softer, waxier and far lighter. None of these are frauds in themselves. The fraud is the label.
Ask the seller one question: is this natural or heat-treated? A good dealer answers immediately and prices accordingly, heated material is inexpensive and natural is not. A vague answer about energy or authenticity is an answer.
Once you own it, the good news is that heat-treated colour is stable and will not fade the way amethyst does in a window. It is water safe and salt tolerant. Handle geode points gently, because thermally shocked crystals chip more readily than untreated ones, and avoid dropping it on a hard surface.
Scan your citrine. It will tell you what it is in seconds, even when the answer is fake.
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First check it is quartz. It should scratch glass. Then read where the colour changes. A chalky white base that breaks into sharp orange at the tips means heated amethyst, every time. Natural colour never stops on a hard line like that. There is no other test you can run at home. The heat is permanent, and only the colour pattern gives it away. A photo can only get you close. Treat a match as a strong hint, then run the test in your hands to be sure.
The label says citrine. The stone is amethyst, or sometimes smoky quartz, that has been baked at roughly 400 to 550 degrees Celsius. The heat turns the violet iron colour centres orange-brown. It is still real quartz and the change is permanent, but the name is not honest unless the heating is disclosed.
Amethyst, or sometimes smoky quartz, roasted at roughly 400 to 550 degrees Celsius. The heat turns the iron colour centres from violet to orange-brown. It is stable and permanent. This is not a fake mineral, it is a treated one, and it should be disclosed. Most shops do not disclose it. Treated material is worth much less than natural citrine. That is on the seller, not on you.
Citrine natural, ametrine, smoky quartz, amber, orange calcite.
Its formula is SiO2, and it sits at 7 for hardness, where a steel knife is about 5.5. Scratching it against something you know is the cheapest way to catch a swap.
Scan your stone. It will tell you what it is in seconds, even when the answer is fake.
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