Beginner-friendly rocks & minerals

A curated starter set: 300 rocks and minerals that are common, durable enough to survive a beginner's hardness test, and safe to handle without special precautions. Each one shows up often enough on real rockhounding trips that you have a real chance of finding it yourself.

Filtered to: common rarity, Mohs hardness 3 or higher, has at least one reference photo, and not flagged as radioactive or toxic.

Hardness 7 (quartz)All minerals By state

Four habits that separate confident IDs from guesses

Step 1
Start with hardness
A pocket scratch kit (a copper coin, a steel knife, a piece of quartz) sorts most specimens into the right hardness band within seconds. Almost every misidentification a new rockhound makes comes from skipping this step.
Step 2
Take a streak
Drag the specimen across the back of a white ceramic tile. Streak color is often more diagnostic than the rock's surface color, especially for iron-bearing minerals.
Step 3
Look at luster, not color
Color lies. Luster — how light reflects off a fresh surface — is far more reliable. Metallic, glassy, pearly, dull: each rules in or out whole categories.
Step 4
Match against known references
Compare every find to a confirmed reference specimen, ideally with a photo. The encyclopedia entries on this site each show what a clean specimen should look like.