>>2756978This. I've seen local Arizona gems posted on ebay and etsy and advertised as being local to the east when there are no gem quality deposits in the east for that mineral.
People often cannot actually fathom just how many gems and minerals are in the western US and even just Arizona. The transition zone of AZ alone has almost every single mineral and gem known to man (including emeralds, diamonds, sapphire, uranite, ruby, every color of quartz etc). AZ alone has been the top producing state for civilian harvested gems and minerals for the last 70+ years straight and is the top producer of. Almost every wash at the base of canyons has placer gold, and random mountains and hills have raw silver ore on the surface, copper and iron ores are found everywhere.
-Peridot (US and world top producer)
-Amethyst (US top producer from a single mountaintop mine, deposits are found elsewhere without any history of mining)
-Turquoise and other Copper bearing minerals and gems (top in US and top in the world for light colored specimens, ie sleeping beauty mountain turquoise).
-Garnet (top gem quality producing state)
-Topaz (top gem quality producer)
-Wulfenite (top in US an world for gem quality specimens)
-Agate (including state/region endemics like AZ-NM fire agate)
-Obsidian (AZ has more volcanic deposits than even NM and more proportionally than even CA, 3 individual cone fields are more than 1,000 sq miles in AZ, the pipes also producer uranium, diamond, sapphire, ruby etc)
-All other kinds of quartz and silicate minerals (but especially milky and clear, some specimens of which weigh tens of tons in random mountain canyons)
-Pyrite (also other sulphur ores like galena and half dozen others)
etc.
