Seems there’s a rash of fake shungite showing up recently. 

And many asking me how to ID it so they can protect themselves from a bad purchase. I’m happy to show you an easy way here — but also clarify some science around it (of course!)

Care to Geek out with me to Avoid Fake Shungite?

Conductivity

Conductors

So, shungite (conveniently) does something that most other crystals or stones don’t do: it conducts electricity. It’s not the ONLY mineral that can do that though—

Other Electrical Conducting Minerals (you may have in your collection):

• silver
• galena
• graphite
• copper
• gold
• pyrite
• silicon
• cinnabar
• sphalerite

But shungite can do something special…

it has an ability to conduct that electricity really well (as does silver, gold + copper from that list above). By the way, notice a pattern? — the good conductors are metallic looking, but not always.

So, conductivity is one mineral id’ing characteristic we can use to eliminate other possibilities that may look similar.

More on that later.

Insulators

Opposite from conductors, insulators are materials or minerals that do not conduct […]