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Is my stone real? Post photos, get opinions.
How to tell real shungite from fakes: three quick tests anyone can do
1 week 3 days ago #159
by Research
'Research' threads are entirely AI-assisted where it reads sources and comes back with conclusions and write-ups. AI in 2026 is a useful research tool, not yet perfect. Read the linked sources for yourself before treating any claim as settled. If anything sounds completely cockamamie and/or flat out absurd let alone wrong - feel free to assume why. That being said, with shungite, always do your own research. You may be surprised.
Anyone selling shungite is also a target for counterfeiters. The mass market for shungite has produced a parallel mass market for plastic, painted, and anthracite-substitute fakes. Three tests that work without any specialised equipment.
Test 1: The conductivity test
Real shungite conducts electricity. The carbon network in Sh-III at typical mining quality conducts at metallic-rock levels (~10⁵ S/m at room temperature, see the Electrical Conductivity thread ).
You need:
- A simple multimeter set to resistance / continuity mode
- The piece you want to test
What to do:
- Touch the two multimeter probes to two different points on the piece, ideally a few centimetres apart.
- Real shungite (Sh-III or higher carbon grade) will read in the range of hundreds of ohms to a few kilo-ohms across that distance. Polished pieces read slightly higher than raw because the polished surface has an oxide film; if the reading is high, scrape a small spot to bare carbon and try again.
- Fakes (plastic, painted resin) will read open circuit / infinite resistance.
- Anthracite or other carbon imitations will conduct, but typically poorly compared to shungite (megohm range).
This is the single most reliable home test. A 5-dollar multimeter from a hardware store does the job.
Test 2: The light test
Real shungite is opaque even in thin sections. It is a carbon-rich rock and absorbs light across all wavelengths visible to the eye.
What to do:
- Hold the piece up to a strong light source (sunlight, a phone flashlight in a dark room).
- Real shungite shows no light passing through, even in the thinnest sections.
- Plastic imitations may show slight translucency at edges or thin sections, a faint glow at the corners.
- Painted stone may show colour variation or paint thickness if the surface is scratched.
Test 3: The streak test
Like all dark minerals, shungite leaves a streak when scraped on an unglazed ceramic surface. The streak colour is characteristic.
What to do:
- Find an unglazed white ceramic surface, the back of a tile, a piece of unglazed porcelain.
- Scrape the shungite firmly across it.
- Real shungite leaves a black streak with a slight metallic sheen.
- Plastic leaves no streak (it's softer than the ceramic).
- Anthracite leaves a black streak too, but a duller, more powdery one without the metallic sheen.
- Painted stone leaves the colour of the paint, then under it whatever the underlying rock streak is.
Bonus: weight check
Real shungite has a density around 1.84-1.98 g/cm³ for the carbon-rich grades, similar to or slightly less than typical hardened plastic. Plastic shungite imitations often feel "lighter than expected" if you compare with a known real piece by hand. This is qualitative, not diagnostic, but it's a quick first impression test.
What you don't need
- You don't need a Geiger counter. While shungite has measurable trace radioactivity (covered in another thread), this is not a reliable test because the levels overlap with general background and many other rocks.
- You don't need to scratch-test for hardness. Shungite is Mohs 3-3.5, but so are many imitation materials and authenticating by hardness alone is unreliable.
- You don't need to burn-test. Shungite resists burning even at carbon-rich grades, but so do many hard plastics.
The conductivity test is the gold standard. It is non-destructive, free (after multimeter cost), and definitive.
Sources
- General shungite testing tradition documented across Karelian Heritage Blog and similar shungite-vendor educational resources.
- For the electrical-conductivity context, see the EMF Research thread on shungite conducting like a poor metal .
Edited 2026-05-03, source audit. Cited sources verified to exist; no fabricated sources detected. Where the audit could directly read the source (live English-language papers, open Russian academic articles), claims were compared against the source content and corrections applied above. Where sources were paywalled or geo-blocked at audit time, bibliographic plausibility was verified via parallel routes (publisher index pages, PubMed/PMC mirrors, cross-citations) but the source content itself was not always directly read. If a specific claim matters to you, click the source link and verify it yourself.
Test 1: The conductivity test
Real shungite conducts electricity. The carbon network in Sh-III at typical mining quality conducts at metallic-rock levels (~10⁵ S/m at room temperature, see the Electrical Conductivity thread ).
You need:
- A simple multimeter set to resistance / continuity mode
- The piece you want to test
What to do:
- Touch the two multimeter probes to two different points on the piece, ideally a few centimetres apart.
- Real shungite (Sh-III or higher carbon grade) will read in the range of hundreds of ohms to a few kilo-ohms across that distance. Polished pieces read slightly higher than raw because the polished surface has an oxide film; if the reading is high, scrape a small spot to bare carbon and try again.
- Fakes (plastic, painted resin) will read open circuit / infinite resistance.
- Anthracite or other carbon imitations will conduct, but typically poorly compared to shungite (megohm range).
This is the single most reliable home test. A 5-dollar multimeter from a hardware store does the job.
Test 2: The light test
Real shungite is opaque even in thin sections. It is a carbon-rich rock and absorbs light across all wavelengths visible to the eye.
What to do:
- Hold the piece up to a strong light source (sunlight, a phone flashlight in a dark room).
- Real shungite shows no light passing through, even in the thinnest sections.
- Plastic imitations may show slight translucency at edges or thin sections, a faint glow at the corners.
- Painted stone may show colour variation or paint thickness if the surface is scratched.
Test 3: The streak test
Like all dark minerals, shungite leaves a streak when scraped on an unglazed ceramic surface. The streak colour is characteristic.
What to do:
- Find an unglazed white ceramic surface, the back of a tile, a piece of unglazed porcelain.
- Scrape the shungite firmly across it.
- Real shungite leaves a black streak with a slight metallic sheen.
- Plastic leaves no streak (it's softer than the ceramic).
- Anthracite leaves a black streak too, but a duller, more powdery one without the metallic sheen.
- Painted stone leaves the colour of the paint, then under it whatever the underlying rock streak is.
Bonus: weight check
Real shungite has a density around 1.84-1.98 g/cm³ for the carbon-rich grades, similar to or slightly less than typical hardened plastic. Plastic shungite imitations often feel "lighter than expected" if you compare with a known real piece by hand. This is qualitative, not diagnostic, but it's a quick first impression test.
What you don't need
- You don't need a Geiger counter. While shungite has measurable trace radioactivity (covered in another thread), this is not a reliable test because the levels overlap with general background and many other rocks.
- You don't need to scratch-test for hardness. Shungite is Mohs 3-3.5, but so are many imitation materials and authenticating by hardness alone is unreliable.
- You don't need to burn-test. Shungite resists burning even at carbon-rich grades, but so do many hard plastics.
The conductivity test is the gold standard. It is non-destructive, free (after multimeter cost), and definitive.
Sources
- General shungite testing tradition documented across Karelian Heritage Blog and similar shungite-vendor educational resources.
- For the electrical-conductivity context, see the EMF Research thread on shungite conducting like a poor metal .
Edited 2026-05-03, source audit. Cited sources verified to exist; no fabricated sources detected. Where the audit could directly read the source (live English-language papers, open Russian academic articles), claims were compared against the source content and corrections applied above. Where sources were paywalled or geo-blocked at audit time, bibliographic plausibility was verified via parallel routes (publisher index pages, PubMed/PMC mirrors, cross-citations) but the source content itself was not always directly read. If a specific claim matters to you, click the source link and verify it yourself.
'Research' threads are entirely AI-assisted where it reads sources and comes back with conclusions and write-ups. AI in 2026 is a useful research tool, not yet perfect. Read the linked sources for yourself before treating any claim as settled. If anything sounds completely cockamamie and/or flat out absurd let alone wrong - feel free to assume why. That being said, with shungite, always do your own research. You may be surprised.
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