Don’t get scammed! What is ‘Agni Manitite’?
Following on from the recent explosion in popularity of Moldavite, a new material has reared its somewhat mysterious head.
There are posts on every mineral sales group I’m a member of offering “Agni Manitite”. The sellers insist it is “just like Moldavite”, an ‘extra terrestrial stone’, or go far enough to insist that it is a tektite. It is not.
This material seems to mostly be sold by Indonesians, and then to crystal healing/new age shops, who are advertising it with all sorts of claims lies.
The names used include “agnimanitite”, “pearl of fire”, sometimes “cintamani”.
There is a type of language that often seems to be used in the posts – the language refers to everyone as being in a ‘tribe’, or a family, or as brothers, or sisters, part of the family.
So what is this material?
The correct term for it would be “Obsidian”, or if you want to be generous, a pseudo-tektite (fake tektite). These are nothing more than water rounded nodules of Obsidian. It can’t even be called rare – I found numerous Facebook posts offering hundreds of kilograms each.
The cheapest piece of this on eBay UK currently is £9. It’s 9.6 grams. I sell 100 grams packets of black Obsidian for just under £2, or rounded nodules known as ‘Apache Tears’ for 75p. The most expensive pieces of Agni Manitite on eBay can be hundreds of pounds.
A trained eye will quickly notice that this new material doesn’t have any of the characteristic shapes of tektites.
I don’t have a piece of what is being sold as “Agni Manitite”, but I did have some Apache Tear Obsidian and some Indochinite tektites handy. Here are some photos for your reference. Note that the Tektites are significantly more opaque – we’d have better results with thinner pieces, but you can see that the Obsidian is significantly more transparent and has a flatter grey-brown colour – coincidentally just like the Agni Manitites…
If you happen to have purchased one of these and wouldn’t mind me having a look, I’d appreciate it! Also, sorry I’ve ruined it for you.
apache tear collage
indochinite tektites
If you do have any questions about Tektites, I would recommend the Facebook group ‘Tektites’.
I’m not quite sure why we are still arguing this, I’ve replied to this thread twice now and it seems my input was overlooked. the writer of this. article and the skeptics on both sides are all correct on this matter. its a classic crystal industry switch up.
The issue here is that there are people off loading wholesale lots of obsidian as agni. As someone who is on the ground in Indonesia 3x a year, this material is everywhere and looks identical to real agni. So while 95% of what you see online is obsidian being sold as agni , there is real agni out there. I myself have occurred a large collection from over the years. Make no mistake real agni is a tektite , not a pseudo- tektite or a meteorite . Real agni is also found in China, When this meteor hit the earth the damage spread for miles. Most of the real meteorite pieces were lost in the ocean.
The likelihood of a shop carrying a real piece is very slim unfortunately.