There is something happening in the crystal market right now that a lot of customers are not going to see from the outside.
They will notice the prices. They will notice that some people are selling rocks cheaper than others. They will notice that one vendor has a box of material for what looks like a deal, while another store is trying to charge a normal retail price for something similar. And the easy assumption is that the higher-priced store must be gouging people.
But that is not really what is happening.
What is happening is that the crystal market is still digesting the aftermath of COVID, the online shopping boom, the wholesale buying rush, the recessionary economy, and now a wave of people trying to exit the industry without caring whether they make a profit.
I watched a lot of this happen firsthand.
During COVID, a lot of people had money, time, and a reason to start something new. Some people were given government support. Some had extra savings because they were not travelling, eating out, or spending in the usual ways. Some were stuck at home and started looking for business ideas. At the same time, crystals, minerals, fossils, and metaphysical products were selling very well online.
So people noticed.
Some were already interested in rocks. Some were not. Some wanted to start a small side hustle. Some wanted to build a full store. Some thought the crystal industry looked easy from the outside.
At Rubble Rock and Gem, we did dozens and dozens of wholesale deals during that period. We helped set people up with everything from small online inventory batches to larger store-style buying packages. Some people spent $6,000 or $10,000. Others spent $50,000 or more. That wholesale movement was a major part of how our business grew during that time. We moved a lot of inventory because a lot of new people were entering the market at once.
But the part people do not see is what happens after the enthusiasm wears off.
A Lot of People Bought Rocks Without Understanding the Business
The crystal business looks simple until you actually have to run it.
Buying rocks is the easy part. Selling them properly is the business.
You need photography, pricing knowledge, storage space, shipping systems, labels, descriptions, customer service, product education, platform management, marketing, traffic, cash flow, and the discipline to keep listing inventory when the excitement of buying it is gone. A lot of new buyers did not understand that part.
They bought wholesale inventory because they thought that was the hard step. It was not. The hard step was turning that inventory into consistent sales.
Some people did well. Some built decent online businesses. Some figured out the rhythm. But many did not. They bought a few thousand dollars of stock, posted a bit of it, sold some of the easy pieces, then realized the rest of the work was slower and harder than expected.
Now a portion of those people just want out.
They are not trying to build a brand anymore. They are not trying to protect a margin. They are not trying to price the market properly. They are trying to get their money back, or as much of it as possible.
So they bought at wholesale, and now they are selling at wholesale.
That matters.
Liquidation Pricing Is Not the Same Thing as Market Pricing
When someone is exiting a business, their pricing logic changes.
A normal business has to price for replacement cost, rent, wages, credit card fees, damage, shrinkage, photography time, staff time, taxes, packaging, marketing, and profit. A liquidation seller does not care about most of that.
They are not asking, “What does this need to sell for so I can stay in business?”
They are asking, “What price gets this out of my house?”
That is a completely different calculation.
When enough people do that at the same time, customers start to think liquidation prices are normal prices. Then real businesses have to explain why they cannot sell every item at the same number as someone clearing out bins in their basement.
This creates consumer confusion. It makes normal retail pricing look inflated, even when it is not. It makes stores look expensive, even when the store is just trying to operate with actual business expenses attached.
And this is where the whole industry starts to feel pressure.
The Economy Did Not Go Back to Normal After COVID
A lot of people talk about “after COVID” as if the economy simply reopened and returned to where it had been. That is not what happened.
The years after COVID brought supply chain problems, inflation, higher rents, higher wages, higher borrowing costs, volatile metal markets, shipping disruptions, war, and general instability. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted energy, grain, and trade patterns. Red Sea attacks, Black Sea disruption, and Panama Canal drought all put stress on major shipping routes; UN Trade and Development noted that, at one point, monthly transits through both the Suez and Panama canals were down more than 40% from their peaks.
Then there were the political shocks. Donald Trump returned to the U.S. presidency in January 2025, which added another layer of uncertainty for Canada because so much of our economy is tied to American policy, trade, tariffs, and investor confidence.
Canada’s economy has not exactly been strong either. Statistics Canada reported that real GDP declined 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2025, and that 2025 had the slowest annual GDP growth since the 2020 decline. Canadian reporting later described the first quarter of 2026 as another slight decline on an annualized basis, which put Canada into what economists commonly call a technical recession.
Whether someone wants to call it a recession, a silent recession, a cost-of-living crisis, or just a bad business environment, the practical result is the same: people are more cautious with money.
That affects crystals.
Customers Shifted From Products Back to Experiences
During COVID, people bought things because there was not much else to do.
They bought home décor. They bought hobbies. They bought crystals. They bought online. They built collections. They watched live sales. They filled shelves. They made their homes more interesting because their homes were where they were spending all their time.
After COVID, the psychology changed.
People wanted to travel again. They wanted restaurants, shows, markets, trips, events, and experiences. Gem show attendance still benefits from that, because a gem show is not just shopping; it is an outing. But regular product buying changed. A lot of customers became more selective. They still liked rocks, but they were no longer stuck inside scrolling for the next piece to arrive in the mail.
At the same time, platforms became more expensive and competitive. Etsy raised its seller transaction fee from 5% to 6.5% in 2022, which caused seller backlash because small sellers were already dealing with rising costs. That is just one example, but the pattern is everywhere. Online selling costs more. Ads cost more. Rent costs more. Shipping costs more. Staff cost more. Packaging costs more. Everything a business needs has become more expensive.
At Rubble Rock and Gem, my warehouse rent has essentially doubled since I first rented my buildings around 2020. That matters. It shows up on the profit and loss statement every month. Like many businesses, we can try to make more sales, but the expense sheet is always chasing us in the background.
Customers feel inflation in groceries and rent. Businesses feel it in every operating line at once.
The Baby Boomer Collector Sell-Off Is the Other Pressure Point
The COVID-era business exits are only one part of the problem.
The other part is generational.
A lot of older collectors are retiring, downsizing, moving, or passing their collections on through estates. Many of them bought rocks in the 1990s or early 2000s, when the market was different. Some bought before crystals became as mainstream as they are now. Some bought when mineral collecting was still more club-based, more old-school, and less influenced by social media.
Those collections are now coming back into the market.
Some of that material is excellent. Some of it was bought cheaply decades ago. Some of it has no modern replacement cost attached in the seller’s mind because the person selling it is not thinking like a current retailer. They are thinking, “I paid less than this years ago, and I just want it gone.”
So you now have two liquidation streams happening at the same time.
You have newer COVID-era sellers exiting failed or abandoned crystal businesses.
And you have older collectors and estates releasing decades of accumulated material.
Both groups can undercut normal retail pricing because neither group is necessarily trying to operate a sustainable business.
That is the part people miss.
This Is Why Prices Feel Inconsistent
A customer may walk into a store and see a polished amethyst tower for one price, then see something similar on Facebook Marketplace or at a liquidation table for less. The customer thinks they are comparing the same thing.
They are not.
They may be comparing a business price to an exit price.
A business price has to account for the cost of staying open. A liquidation price only has to move the item.
This is why the market feels strange right now. Some sellers are pricing like retailers. Some are pricing like wholesalers. Some are pricing like people who made a bad bet and want their floor space back.
That creates a temporary distortion.
It does not mean rocks are suddenly worth nothing. It does not mean every store is overpriced. It means the market is being flooded with inventory from people who are no longer trying to make a living in the market.
And when that happens, everyone still operating has to respond.
Good News for Customers, Harder News for Businesses
For customers, this period can be excellent.
There are deals everywhere. Stores are being forced to sharpen pricing. Collectors are selling. Failed businesses are liquidating. Estates are appearing. Inventory that was once tucked away is coming back into circulation.
At Rubble Rock and Gem, we are having to compete with that environment too. That means customers are getting fantastic deals from us right now because the market has forced us to price more aggressively than we normally would.
That is good for the buyer.
But it is not the same as saying the market is healthy.
A healthy market allows businesses to buy, sell, pay staff, pay rent, replace inventory, and make enough profit to keep improving. A liquidation-heavy market teaches customers to expect exit pricing, even though exit pricing cannot support a real store forever.
That is the tension.
This Will Probably Take Years to Work Through
People in the industry talk about this because we can see it happening.
This is probably not a one-year issue. It may take five or six years for the excess inventory to work through the system. Small failed businesses will continue to sell off stock. Estates will continue to appear. Retiring collectors will continue downsizing. Marketplace listings will continue dragging attention toward low-margin pricing.
Eventually, that material gets absorbed.
The better pieces find homes. The common material gets scattered. The people who were never really committed to the business leave. The old collections thin out. Then the market starts to normalize again around replacement cost, sourcing difficulty, freight, labour, rent, and actual retail margins.
But we are not fully there yet.
Right now, crystal pricing is being shaped by a mix of recession pressure, post-COVID business exits, retiring collectors, high operating costs, and customer confusion around what a fair price really means.
So when you see weirdly cheap rocks, understand what you may be looking at.
You may not be seeing the new normal.
You may be seeing someone else’s exit.