Warning: Unscrupulous Peruvian Crystal Exporters sell TOXIC Pyrite

In a secretive crystal industry, greedy people always find a way to make more profit, no matter the consequences for others. Information is the key to positive change, so let’s whistleblow again:  

Unscrupulous Peruvian Crystal Exporters sell toxic Pyrite

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Sleeping with the enemy?

“Give me your BEST price!” Is the never-stopping mantra of Chinese or Indian wholesalers when buying rough rock and crystals all around the world. We all have heard it and we all had to make a decision: to do the right thing or to stop caring.

Whenever I hear that phrase I feel my smile freezing and I hear a voice saying: “MY best price is when I actually make a profit, but that’s not what you want. You are asking me to give you the price that is BEST for you and leaves no profit for me at all.” Then, while keeping the frozen smile I lean back asking myself: “Do I reduce my price another 5 cents for you?“

Then we start the hours-long game of negotiation although both of us know the end of it already. You will explain to me that you are Indias’ biggest importer and you buy 10 containers per year, not knowing that I already checked the export statistics knowing that you imported barely 5 tons last year.

You will ask me for the kilo price if you buy an entire container of 20 tons.  I will nodd and admire your order size, while already knowing that if I give you a discount for quantity you then will ask for this discount while only buying a single ton from me. You will never buy a container, you only want to find out what my lowest offer is.

I will give you a price, then you will cry about the Indian market being down and I will cry about increased costs and inflation.

Then we will change the topic, sipping a coffee, eating some cookies, talking about the importance of our friendship. You will call me “brother” and we agree on the importance of acting as a family. I will admire the beauty of India, you the beauty of Peru. Then we return to step one: “Give me your BEST price“

Although we sometimes sell to India, as CEO of Gemrock I know that the likelihood of the wholesaler closing a deal like this with me is less than 5%. This is because as an ethical crystal business, we have standards and principles that stand in the way of us “sleeping with the enemy.” Sadly (for my brother) I am neither needy nor greedy, so I enjoy the fun of negotiating but stay true to my price.  I am not engaging in what others will do:

Before we talk about toxic pyrite 

Some necessary background about Pyrite material pricing

Pyrite is probably the most complicated type of crystal for pricing and here we can only give you a short idea.

Crystal Size

The growth of crystals is a long geological process. Big ones are rare (and therefore expensive) and small ones are frequent (and cheap). Price is determined by the size of the crystals (not the clusters) in 5 levels from the cheapest (Quinoa quality) with 1 mm sized crystals to the more expensive Cubes (everything with crystals above 1 cm size). Pyrite with small crystals will be much cheaper than Pyrite clusters with big crystals.

Crystal shape

Peruvian crystals appear in three main shapes: cuboid (frequent), pyritohedron (less frequent), and octahedron (the rarest and most expensive shape). However, there are also 27+ intermediary shapes, but that is too much detail for now

Level of damage

Collectors’ crystals must show very little damage, and the more perfect they are, the more expensive they are. Because pyrite is mined with dynamite, 95% of the material is damaged, and only 5% qualifies for collectors.

The cheap “bulk” pyrite is very damaged. (No matter how big the crystals are, if they are damaged, they are bulk.) Bulk is sold by the tons and containers.

The bulk material is used for lapidary work like hearts, spheres, and all kinds of shapes. We do recommend our clients to always choose at least Chispa quality (crystals of 1-3 mm size) because the cheaper quinoa looks bad, even as polished crystal.

Some necessary background about production cost

Until a crystal leaves Peru there are several associated costs:

• Mining costs
• National transport to Lima (where the lapidary workshops are)
• Lapidary costs in case you convert the crystals into carved and polished products
• Sorting and cleaning of crystals: manual sorting of crystal qualities according to the above criteria and several steps of acid cleaning of the very dirty pyrite crystals coming from the mine.
• Packaging costs.

A look behind the curtain: How the business works 

I feel shy to state the obvious: nobody likes to work for free (covering costs only).

We all work to feed our families and live a decent life (at the minimum).

So clearly there is a bare minimum price that should be respected by wholesalers around the world (some may call this “Fairtrade”).

However, the reality is different. Wholesalers in general (I am not discriminating by country now) tend to try to lower the price as much as possible without caring about the result being “fair”. If they can get it cheaper they will. While European wholesalers are rather decent in their negotiation and leave a margin for the seller, Indian and Chinese wholesalers are definitely on the far other end of the spectrum.

When I hear wholesalers publicly declare that they would know the pyrite miners personally and support the community of miners and hand-pick all their crystals then a single word comes to my mind: B….s….

Let us be clear: there is not a single international crystal wholesaler or fine mineral dealer who would know a single pyrite miner personally. The Peruvian Pyrite business has a clearly established hierarchy. Miners are hired by local dealers. The local dealers serve the Peruvian exporters. Point

Even if a foreign wholesaler would travel to the mining area he would do so either accompanied by the Peruvian exporter or he maybe knows one of the local dealers, but never will he deal with a miner.

And even if he knows a local dealer, he still will have to close the business with the Peruvian exporter, because they are the only ones speaking English and having a legal export business being able to organize a shipment.

As for lapidary workshops: All of them (except the in-house workshop of Gemrock Peru, the only legal cutting workshop in Peru) are illegal shadow businesses hidden away behind walls in the desert mountain outskirts of Lima, cash-based and with terrible labor conditions. Child labor is still seen. I don’t think a single foreign wholesaler would be able to find those hidden workshops or get permission to set foot inside. It is all managed by the Peruvian exporters.

Fools Gold: When greedy people fool each other 

If you made it reading to this point, you already understand that the guys who negotiate the price are the Peruvian exporters and the foreign wholesalers. None of them cares for the miners. Both of them aim to maximize their profits.

Wholesalers often think they have a buyer advantage. But the Peruvian exporter has a huge arsenal of dirty tricks to play:

Reduce Cleaning Costs: Pyrite comes dirty from the mine. To make it shine it has to pass through several cleaning steps with different acids. By reducing the steps exporters reduce labor and acid costs improving their profits. The result however is that the pyrite will only shine for a few months and then start to tarnish. By then the wholesaler buyer might have already sold a good part of his lot. Who pays the bill is the consumer, who bought a cheap pyrite crystal that will soon lose its beauty by going dark.

Such a measure could be considered fair. The wholesaler pays less, so he cannot expect the same quality. It would be OK if the Peruvian Exporter would be upfront and honest about it.

However, what comes now, cannot be justified if one is an ethical crystal dealer.

Quality Upgrading: as I showed above, there is a complicated quality grading for pyrite and the price in the mine depends on that grading. Quinoa – the lowest bad-looking quality – is cheaper than Chispa or Spark. Spark is the lowest quality we recommend for carving. It also is the quality Indian and Chinese wholesalers aim to buy most. However, over the last decade, they have pressured prices too far down to make the business viable.

But Exporters found a solution. They upgrade quinoa quality by adding 20 to 30 % Spark quality and then sell it to the wholesalers as 100% Spark. The upper layer of each box is chispa and the lower part is mostly quinoa. As most wholesalers have their employees doing the unpacking or don’t know how to differentiate themselves, the mix will be accepted as spark.

Quality Upgrading: as I showed above, there is a complicated quality grading for pyrite and the price in the mine depends on that grading. Quinoa – the lowest bad-looking quality – is cheaper than Chispa or Spark. Spark is the lowest quality we recommend for carving. It also is the quality Indian and Chinese wholesalers aim to buy most. However, over the last decade, they have pressured prices too far down to make the business viable.

But Exporters found a solution. They upgrade quinoa quality by adding 20 to 30 % Spark quality and then sell it to the wholesalers as 100% Spark. The upper layer of each box is chispa and the lower part is mostly quinoa. As most wholesalers have their employees doing the unpacking or don’t know how to differentiate themselves, the mix will be accepted as “spark”.

Last resort: go toxic 

Often Indian and Chinese wholesalers want “premium” or “top-quality” Pyrite. When they make a request they send pictures of top-quality collectors level pyrite cubes that would cost wholesale in Peru anything between 50 and 150 USD per kilo. We all know they don’t want that. In 8 years in the business, I have never seen an Asian wholesaler willing to pay more than 10 USD per kilo for Pyrite. The problem is that even the badly damaged Bulk of Cube quality level  (clusters with heavily damaged crystals bigger than 1 cm) does cost in the mine more than 10 USD per kilo, not including any of the above-mentioned production costs and not including any profit for the Peruvian exporter. So how is it possible that those foreign wholesalers buy this bulk material by the tons every year?

Even the usual upgrading by mixing a small percentage of “good” material with a huge percentage of lower grade material will not reduce the costs enough for the exporter to make a profit at such a buying price. There is only one way for Peruvian exporters to fulfill such orders: go toxic.

What does that mean?

All Pyrite contains not only iron and sulfur. It also contains arsenic, one of the most toxic substances in nature. Arsenic is not only toxic it also makes the pyrite look dark and without shine.

Responsible wholesalers from Europe and the USA will want only Pyrite from the Huanzala mine, which is the Peruvian pyrite with the best shine and the lowest possible arsenic content. And they are willing to pay the required price for this more expensive material.

Cheap prices can only be achieved by mixing Huanzala pyrite with pyrite from other mines and selling it to the uninformed or not caring wholesaler as 100% Huanzala pyrite. For example, pyrite from the Morococha mine has big crystals, but it’s less shiny, dark, and has a very high content of arsenic. Acquiring it from the mine does cost a tiny fraction of Huanzala Pyrite, maybe 20%. Pyrite from the Morococha mine is used in huge quantities by Peruvian exporters to cheat on their wholesale buyers and sell to them at the price those wholesalers are willing to pay.

Not only toxic but “criminal” 

When it comes to cheap carved pyrite products, like spheres, palm stones, and other objects, there seems no limit to human greed. There have been cases of Peruvian Exporters forcing the artisan shadow business carving workshops to use toxic pyrite as raw material for carving. I personally talked to carvers reporting headaches and nausea from breathing the fumes while grinding the material that they had to stop working after just half an hour. Arsenic is highly toxic and will lead to cancer sooner or later. Most carving workshops will not lay their hands on such material but when there is no food on the table, some do.

How to recognize carved products made from toxic pyrite:

In the first weeks of the product arriving at your crystal shop or your home (if you are a pyrite customer reading this article) your pyrite will look nice and shiny (because of the acid cleaning). To be honest, all pyrite will tarnish at some point and it will tarnish faster in more humid environments. But toxic pyrite will tarnish in a matter of weeks and months while Huanzala pyrite that has been properly cleaned may stay shiny for years. It might get dull but not really black, while toxic pyrite will go gray and blackish. A good spot to detect toxic pyrite are unpolished surfaces. On the picture you can see the underside of two pyramits. one is golden, the other one made from toxic pyrite shows a blackish coloration.

Who is to Blame? 

In short:

Every consumer, who wants always more for less without caring or even thinking about how that could be possible.

Every wholesaler, who does not care about the health of his client, nor the living conditions of the miners, but merely about a dollar more in his pocket.

Every Peruvian Exporter, who sees himself as even smarter than the Indian or Chinese wholesaler, does not care either about his countrymen, but only about another dollar in his pocket, and resorts to cheating on his customers.

The only one not to blame is the poor miner breaking his back while carrying 60 kilos of pyrite for miles at 4000 meters of altitude and has no choice but to sleep with the enemy, be it a Peruvian, Chinese, or Indian one.

Lessons to be learned from this article 

For crystal shops and crystal lovers alike:

If you only look for the cheapest price, it is unavoidable that you sponsor abusive and unhealthy labor conditions and poverty for Peruvian miners and lapidary workers.

If you only look for the cheapest price it is unavoidable that at least part of the pyrite crystals you buy are toxic.

If your pyrite tarnishes fast it is likely that it was not cleaned properly (to save money) or that it is toxic.

If you buy pyrite (even from a European, American, or Australian crystal shop) that comes from an Indian or Chinese wholesaler, …. well, you did read the article, right?

Watch out for American wholesale companies that are actually Chinese.

Decide if you want to buy in Chinese live sales on TikTok or Instagram.

Be careful when you work with Peruvian Exporters. Instruct yourself so you can recognize crystals from Huanzala and differentiate them visually from the crystals that come from other mines. If you detect such crystals in your supposed Huanzala Pyrite,…. make a responsible decision about keeping to work with this provider.

Gemrocks Position 

We educate Indian and Chinese wholesalers transparently about all that you did read in the article so that they understand why we have a certain minimum price limit and will not sell cheaper to them.  That is the reason why we have very few clients from India and none from China.

We do sell bulk crystals, but normally only find European and some US-based wholesalers willing to pay the price for good non-toxic quality. The Australian market sadly is dominated by Indian and Chinese wholesalers, although we have several Australian crystalshops buying directly from us. 

We help change the system from within. We work with a few selected artisan cutting shops in case wholesalers approach us for cheaper low-quality carvings that can compete on price with other Peruvian exporters, meaning we are only a bit more expensive. We rarely get such contracts and when we do we work with associated cutting shops that are in the process of becoming legal companies and providing fair salaries and better working conditions. Our legal and accounting staff regularly supports those workshops for free to help them on their way into legality. 

We concentrate on selling our top-quality pyrite carvings, made in-house by our own staff in our own legal cutting workshop, directly to ethical crystal shops who are willing to pay the additional cost for good quality and real Fairtrade.

We source top-quality collector crystals directly from the miners (not from local dealers and middlemen).  As we are living here, we had the chance to build such direct contacts over years. We pay the miners a fair price for their top-quality crystals. So naturally our crystals are a bit more expensive than the ones from other sellers.

By doing what we are doing we do not have a lot of clients, but pyrite is also not our main business, so we do not need to accept customers who ask for conditions we consider unethical. We are happy to sell to a few ethical and responsible business clients. 

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