Sunstone versus peach moonstone

[gemjunkie]

Yesterday I was at the Bead Tour sale in Minneapolis.  There were a lot of strands marked as sunstone in a beige-pale pink color, with a little schiller and some glimmer.  I picked out a couple of strands.  Later, walking by some strands marked peach moonstone, I noticed the color similarity, and compared the two side-to-side.  They seemed identical in color.  I know sunstone and moonstone are both feldspars, but I thought sunstone was more orange than pale pink.  What did I actually buy?

[Russ Nobbs]

Without the strand in my hand I'm not sure I could tell you. And even then I might not be positive.
You are correct that sunstone is usually orangey or reddish, not pink.

Sadly, we are at the mercy of the vendors with some stones that are similar or related. As you probably know, there is a lot of "sloppy" naming caused, in part, by descriptive names translated into English mineral names. When we label strands we'll correct the name if we are sure we know what the stone is. Other times we'll accept the vendor's name if it seems plausible. We don't subject every batch of beads to any sort of testing unless we suspect the name is radically inaccurate.

If the sunstone beads you bought are the roundish ones we remember, they are from a vendor who is usually accurate in his naming.
We did get peach moonstone in summer 2008, and 2 types of sunstone this last month. One is African sunstone...small sizes with red flash.
The other larger rounds (12mm-ish) that looks very much like peach moonstone.

If you give us some info from the tag I could get more info on the specific one you got. The bottom line on one side of the tag starts out with C&C. Please let me have that complete line. You can e-mail me directly at russnobbs at hotmail dot com  We'll try to track it down for you.