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News From the Website

News From the Website

By /July 14, 2026 /1 comment /Uncategorized

A grateful and heartfelt goodbye to my friend and 10-year website designer\manager, Leah, of Alpine, Texas. Enjoy retirement! More news: This posting is my first produced by my new tech whiz, Catherine, of Islesboro, Maine. New Alpine, Texas, agates. #7071 #7071, enlarged This photo is a freeform designer cab cut recently from another Carver Agate Field geode. The finished cab’s shape mirrors the shape and size of the geode from which this piece was cut and polished. As beautiful as it is, it is even more interesting as a geologic specimen. The citrine geode surrounds a fortification agate which in turn surrounds a petite, perfect, crystal quartz cave. Even more interesting is the green crystal which juts out of the crystal quartz druzzi. I don’t know what this green crystal is. I have never encountered it before in The Carver Agate Field. I hope you enjoy seeing it as much […]

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Here is another Texas oddity I have not seen before!

Here is another Texas oddity I have not seen before!

By /May 5, 2026 /2 comments /Cut Rocks

Rock #6960 This ugly duckling is odd, rare, and completely unexpected. Take a look at the outside of this stone. See photos 6967 and 6968 below. Rock #6967 Rock #6968 The stones’ exterior gave no clue as to what was inside. This nodule filled with “multi-colored snakes” is an oddity made more so because of the red, white, green, and brown coloration without banding. I have cut thousands of Carver geodes and nodules, many being very unique, many being more pretty, but few are as odd and inexplicable as this. If I had to guess (and I will now), I suspect heat had something to do with what we are seeing for this coloration. The heat probably occurred after the nodule was formed. It is the uniformity of coloration change from the outside to the center that raised interesting questions as to how it happened. This is why I love […]

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Odd/Rare/Perfect: How I evaluate Agates and Geodes

Odd/Rare/Perfect: How I evaluate Agates and Geodes

By /March 20, 2026 /2 comments /Cut Rocks

This posting highlights several Carver agates/geodes cut in the winter of 2026. I have selected stones that are either odd or rare (seldom found or observed) or perfect or near perfect in one or several regards. Some I will merely categorize, and I will provide a short explanation of my categorization criteria for others. If I merely categorize a stone without explanation, feel free to contact me for more explanation. This posting is also available as a Carver Report so you can locate it easily in the future. ODD Images 6791, 6792, 6793 below—3 different aspects of a rock I call Deep Pit Rock—represent well my “odd” category. This is a hand ground and polished blue agate nodule (could be a geode, but without cutting it I can’t tell) from the, so called by me, “Deep Pit” area of The Carver Agate Field. The Deep Pit area was featured in […]

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I have never seen this before and I cannot explain it!

I have never seen this before and I cannot explain it!

By /February 8, 2026 /1 comment /Cut Rocks

Rock #6707 Twenty years of cutting literally thousands of nodules, geodes, agates, jaspers and jasp/agates from The Carver and, in February 2026, something new and different appeared. This was an unimpressive typical looking nodule (see above). The agate banding in the three areas—right, left, and center—are typical of agate formation in Carver nodules. And then, the geological oddity. Red appears to bleed into the blue of the original color of the stone, but then suddenly there is a dark blue/black band, and then the lighter blue coloration of the original stone. The 3 agate areas of the stone are clearly colored somehow. Rock #6707 DetailClick on the image to open a new window for better viewing If the coloration followed the bands, this would not be unusual. In fact, it would be typical. If the coloration followed or flowed along a crack, this would be very common and is what […]

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Midwinter Cutting of Agates and Geodes from The Carver Agate Field

Midwinter Cutting of Agates and Geodes from The Carver Agate Field

By /February 4, 2026 /0 comments /Cut Rocks

It is January 25, 2026, slightly above zero in temperature, snow storm in progress. It is a good day to post my newest cut and polished agates and geodes from The Carver Agate Field. This post involves several of the most interesting material. I am including a new photo gallery to accompany this post. The gallery is titled, January 2026 Blizzard Gallery, and it contains a lot more of what I have been up to this winter. Be sure to check it out! Texas Amethyst Agate World Headquarters Shop Museum and Gallery Rock #6647 First up: #6647 is a brecciated sagenitic fortification agate geode. Wow, what a mouthful! The greenish blobs in the bottom third of the stone, in the center, are the sagenitic part. The geode part in the detail above is the red crystal lined cavity. The brecciated part is comprised of the several brown colored shards of […]

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The Perfect Citrine Plume Agate Geode

The Perfect Citrine Plume Agate Geode

By /December 22, 2025 /1 comment /Cut Rocks

Rock #6504 While cutting Carver Agate Field geodes this summer, I saw what to me was the perfect citrine plume agate geode. Some explanation: Natural citrine, which is normally a yellow silica (quartz), is quite rare. This is because much of the citrine seen in jewelry today started out as amethyst which was then heat treated to turn it the yellow citrine color. Natural citrine is quite valuable. So if natural citrine is fairly rare, nearly transparent citrine comprising the entire geode is doubly rare. This citrine geode has added rarity—a perfectly formed golden plume agate. It is also of considerable interest that the nearly transparent citrine allows one to see into the citrine surrounding the geode cavity which glows white from the quartz crystals lining the inside of the cavity. In very bright light, other plumes can be seen deeper in the citrine surrounding the cavity. Lastly, while fractures […]

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Blue Agates Appear Again at The Carver Agate Field

Blue Agates Appear Again at The Carver Agate Field

By /December 10, 2025 /0 comments /Cut Rocks

Blue agates are fairly common and, as these photos show, blue agates from The Carver appear in many beautiful and often times interesting configurations. These photos attempt to show the very interesting blue agates that I discovered during my cutting and polishing of new material from The Carver Agate Field. I hope you appreciate seeing the interesting ways blue agates have appeared this summer. And don’t forget to visit the newest addition to the collection of Galleries here at Texas Amethyst Agate.com: The Summer 2025 Gallery. There you will see many of this summer’s finds and work which I hope you will also enjoy. Rock #6163 Rock #6163 Detail Rock #6164 Rock #6164 Detail Rock #6067 Rock #6069 Rock #5883 Rock #5885 Rock #5917 Rock #5918 Rock #5950 Rock #5953 Rock #5994 Rock #6052 Rock #6082 Rock #6101 Rock #6133 Rock #6300 Rock #6317 Rock #6318 Rock #6412 Rock #6421 […]

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The Parachute: Acicular Black Goethite Crystals

The Parachute: Acicular Black Goethite Crystals

By /December 3, 2025 /0 comments /Cut Rocks

I have previously noted my surprise at finding goethite crystals appearing inside of Carver geodes. As these photos show, they are usually seen appearing within geodes having a quartz crystal central cavity, with only one or sometimes two goethite crystals growing out of a purely quartz matrix. The “parachute’ photo shows the goethite crystal growing through the quartz crystal matrix which was apparently covered by a secondary yellow mineralization through which the goethite crystals grew! So, we have three separate crystallizations occurring in apparent succession. The goethite crystal as it grew lifted up part of the yellow mineralization which in the photo looks like a yellow hot air balloon or “parachute”. That is why I conclude that the goethite was the last crystallization to occur. Why goethite, which is an iron family mineral, forms out of an otherwise pure quartz crystallization is indeed curious. I hope you enjoy seeing this […]

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Newly Found/Cut Green, Red, Yellow, and Blue Geodes/Agates

Newly Found/Cut Green, Red, Yellow, and Blue Geodes/Agates

By /November 24, 2025 /1 comment /Cut Rocks

My last two posts were “Two Decade Photo Gallery,” displaying the 1,356 Carver Agate Field polished specimens, followed by a second gallery highlighting 20 years of approximately 1,000 Carver Agate Field cabs. After these exhaustive compilations of approximately 2,300 Carver Agate Field “beauties” came summer chores and gardening. The gardening was challenging and time consuming, but ultimately very successful. I have taken short breaks from my gardening and now, following the killing frost, I am ready to show you some of the beautiful and interesting specimens which I have cut and polished this summer during my breaks. It will take several posts over the next several weeks to bring the best of these new stones to this website. I continue to be amazed and delighted to find new and different material taken solely from the wonderfully diverse and geologically astounding Carver Agate Field of West Texas. The following photos are […]

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20 Years of Cabbing The Carver Agate Field

20 Years of Cabbing The Carver Agate Field

By /June 5, 2025 /3 comments /Cabochons

The best way to explore and enjoy the rocks of The Carver Agate Field of Far West Texas is to view this new photo gallery of nearly 1000 cut and polished cabs from The Carver exclusively found and cut by me. The cutting, polishing, and magnification of photos of these cabs is the most effective way to see the geological wonder of this single West Texas volcanic formation which was described by my late friend, mentor, geologist, and self-described rock enthusiast, Bill Halepeska, of Midland, Texas, who observed that The Carver Agate Field is “the most diverse, colorful, and unique agate find in Far West Texas since the early 1960’s”. Click here to see this new Cabochon gallery, and be sure to check out the recently posted 1300+ photo gallery of rock specimens from The Carver Agate Field! Some samples: Rock #784 Rock #785 Rock #3347 Rock #3819 Rock #3838 […]

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