Crystals, Rocks, Minerals, and Gems
Ranked #25,828 in Entertainment, #316,034 overall | Donates to Squidoo Charity Fund, Humane Society of the United States
Welcome to Stone Art Traders - Where your passion for natural treasure is our mission!
We're not mineralogists, geologists, or metaphysical specialists (unlike many of our friends, colleagues, and customers), so we leave the expert references to amazing individuals whose knowledge and loving dedication to their areas of specialization are unequalled. We have links to some of their works for your enjoyment and education as well as ours!
We're just ordinary folks who love beautiful things of all kinds and want to share them with you. Come visit us at our website, you'll be glad you did!
Sample Items In Our Mineral Collection
Unique Gifts and Jewelry
Need a gift for a hard-to-buy-for person or just something special for yourself?
Choose from a wide selection of unique gifts from the web store. Our inventory is vast and we have only scratched the surface of getting it loaded in our new store. If you don't see what you're looking for while browsing, please send us an email of what you want. We will search our extensive inventory base to see if we have it. If we do, we'll send you pictures of it with current pricing. If we don't have it and can't find it for you, we'll let you know that too! Take a peek at our webstore. 
About Us
Who is Stone Art Traders?
We are a family owned rock business and Steve Goins is the "celebrity" artist of our Stone Art Traders website. He is the original collector of our comprehensive inventory of beautiful, rare crystals and mineral specimens. He specializes in pen and ink and charcoal drawings as well as computer generated graphic design. Some of his published works include the illustrations in "Love is in the Earth, Crystal Tarot" - a collaborative effort with New York Times best selling author Melody Green, and "Earthborn Wisdom" with Susan Jennings. He's a really great guy who loves people, dogs, art, blues harmonica, and playing devil's advocate! :)We also feature the work and products of guest artists and herbal specialists from time to time who serve the same unique industries and individuals that we do. Our goal is to bring you the very finest, most unique items from across the country and the world, at fair, friendly prices to enrich your spirit, and your personal world.
Check out our recent photos from our weekend trip to Mt. Ida, Arkansas, at Merlin's Black Phantom Mine. The mine was flooded from all the rain and we couldn't get the pump to work so we had to dig around in the tailings, but it was still a lot of fun! Just a word of caution if you're up there even in the very early spring....take a hat and your sunscreen! We all got sunburned when it finished snowing!
Stone Art Traders on Etsy
Here's a closer look at the handcrafted jewelry in our shop...
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Some unique items from our Squidoo ShopIt store
Sorry, there are no matching results available from ShopItSee the largest known crystals in the world! OMG! Now that's a crystal!
National Geographic News - TOTALLY AWESOME!
National Geographic News, April 7, 2009 Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) -Photograph by Javier Trueba/Madrid Scientific Films (pictures previously appeared in the Spanish edition of National Geographic magazine)
Click here to see the article and other incredible photos!
We ran across this article while surfing the net a little while back and were so blown-away buy it we wanted to share it with you.
April 9, 2007-Geologist Juan Manuel García-Ruiz calls it "the Sistine Chapel of crystals," but Superman could call it home.
A sort of south-of-the-border Fortress of Solitude, Mexico's Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) contains some of the world's largest known natural crystals-translucent beams of gypsum as long as 36 feet (11 meters).
How did the crystals reach such superheroic proportions?
In the new issue of the journal Geology, García-Ruiz reports that for millennia the crystals thrived in the cave's extremely rare and stable natural environment. Temperatures hovered consistently around a steamy 136 degrees Fahrenheit (58 degrees Celsius), and the cave was filled with mineral-rich water that drove the crystals' growth.
Modern-day mining operations exposed the natural wonder by pumping water out of the 30-by-90-foot (10-by-30-meter) cave, which was found in 2000 near the town of Delicias (Chihuahua state map). Now García-Ruiz is advising the mining company to preserve the caves.
"There is no other place on the planet," García-Ruiz said, "where the mineral world reveals itself in such beauty."
Deep inside Naica mountain, the Cave of Crystals is a horseshoe-shaped cavity in limestone rock about 30 feet (10 meters) wide and 90 feet (30 meters) long.
Volcanic activity that began about 26 million years ago created Naica mountain and filled it with high-temperature anhydrite gypsum (giant shards of which are pictured above).
When magma underneath the mountain cooled and the temperature dropped, the anhydrite began to dissolve. The anhydrite slowly enriched the waters with sulfate and calcium molecules, which for millions of years have been deposited in the caves in the form of huge selenite gypsum crystals.
"There is no limit to the size a crystal can reach," geologist Juan Manuel García-Ruiz said.
The two brothers who discovered this Cave of Crystals "antechamber" dubbed it the Queen's Eye, because the opening leading to it resembled an eye.
The cave is 950 feet (290 meters) underground. The Naica mining complex, which yields lead, zinc, copper, silver, and gold, zigzags nearly half a mile underground (760 meters).
Delicate as glass, the "megacrystals" require great humidity and a temperature of about 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) to maintain their current form.
A special door has been constructed to seal off the Cave of Crystals from the rest of the mining complex, which is ventilated to keep it at a comparatively brisk 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius).
Books you might like about Crystals, Rocks, Minerals and Gems
Collecting, Identification, and Classification Reference Books
Very cool information for rockhounds from other rockhounds...
Crystal and Mineral Images, Photos, Interactive Media
- The Dynamic Earth - Very Cool Pictures!
- Geology, Gems, and Minerals Subject Guide Great multimedia gallery of Gems & Minerals, Rocks and Mining, Plate Tectonics & Volcanoes, and The Solar System from the Smithsonian Institute.
- Rockhounds Information Pages - WARNING: You could be here all day!
- So much information your head will spin! Rock shops and galleries, images and pictures, books, articles, publications, museums, general earth science information, paleontology, lapidary, collecting sites, software, personal pages of other collectors.
- Birthstones Information
- Listing and pictures of birthstones and their healing properties by the American Gem Society. Click on page, then select either birthstones, or Healing Power of Jewelry.
- Zodiac Stones
- Complete reference of zodiac, birthstone, traditional and modern.
More books you may enjoy about rocks: Metaphysical Properties and Attributes
Get it on Ebay @ Stoneart55
Reader Feedback
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FunGifts4All
Apr 9, 2009 @ 7:58 pm | delete
- Nice Lens. Love crystals! Good luck and have fun.
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by StoneArtTrader
Stone Art Traders began from our fascination with the awesome beauty and amazing forms of nature's mineral creations. Starting from a small personal... more »
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