Braldu Stone

What we refuse

The list of things we will not do

Every one of these costs us sales. They are on a page of their own because a refusal you cannot find is not worth much to the person deciding whether to trust you.

  • No glued, repaired or restored specimens

    Ever, at any price, disclosed or not. If the ultraviolet lamp finds adhesive, the piece stays in Hunza and we walk away from the money. Repair is legitimate in parts of the mineral trade and plenty of honest dealers sell repaired material with a clear note attached. We have decided not to be in that business at all, because a category we never touch is one we can never be wrong about.

    This refusal is older than the company. Hiding a defect from a buyer is forbidden outright in the tradition of the region this material comes from, and the people doing our buying were raised on that rule rather than trained into it. Where the standard comes from.

  • No healing claims or metaphysical language

    No chakras, no energy, no properties, no wellness framing of any kind. These are objects of natural history and we sell them as what they are. If you are looking for that vocabulary you will be happier somewhere else, and we mean that without any edge.

  • Pakistan is not a locality

    Neither is Himalaya, and neither is Hunza when the seller actually named a village. Where the purchase record supports a village we print the village. Where it does not, the listing says exactly how far the information goes and stops there. We would rather publish a vague attribution that is true than a precise one that is decorative.

  • No cut stones, no treated stones, no gem-grade claims

    Nothing faceted, polished, shaped, dyed, irradiated, heated or oiled. Natural display crystals only, cleaned and nothing further. We also do not make gem-grade or investment claims about any of it, because those are appraisals and we are not appraisers.

  • No stock photography presented as our own

    The landscape photographs on this site were taken by other people in the Karakoram. They are licensed under Creative Commons, credited on the image itself, and listed on the credits page. We have not stood in every frame and we are not going to imply that we have.

    The pictures of the workings are ours. Our buyer shot four videos on his phone at a working and sent them to us over WhatsApp, and the stills are frames from those videos. They carry no village name because he did not send one, and WhatsApp strips the location metadata out of a video on the way. They will replace the borrowed scenery as more of them arrive. The workings, so far.

    The three photographs of rock on the how we work page are ours as well. They are pieces our buyer is assessing in Hunza. Nothing in them has been bought, nothing is inventory and none of it is for sale, and the captions say so rather than leaving a reader to assume a catalogue. What they are being looked at for.

    Specimen photographs are always ours. Every one has to show the exact piece being offered, and none of them may come from a catalogue.

  • No wet or enhanced specimen photographs

    Wetting or oiling a crystal fakes luster and is close to standard practice in parts of this market. The rule here allows none of it. A specimen is photographed dry, on a consistent neutral background, with a scale reference in frame, under lighting that does not flatter. Damage has to be shown as plainly as the good faces.

  • No invented credibility

    No testimonials we did not receive, no review counts, no trust badges, no certifications or memberships we do not hold, and no years-in-business claims. Braldu Stone is new. The operating model is the argument, and padding it with borrowed signals would undercut the only thing we are actually selling.

The chain of custody behind all of this

Refusals are only half of it. The other half is what happens to every piece on its way from the bazaar to the box.

How we work Get first look