Brandberg crystals are agreed by many to be the best in the world. The display a particular high luster and many have fascinating internal features such as windowing, phantoms, mobile water bubbles and much more.

The Brandberg mountain is now a protected area and so mining for crystals is prohibited. The main mining area known as Brandberg (Fire Mountain) is in the Goboboseb area, west of Brandberg Mountain, about 80 kilometers from from Uis which is the nearest town.

The area is very hot, dry and inaccessible, making the mining conditions unusually difficult. Crystal specimens are becoming increasingly hard to find; miners chisel away at the hard basalt rock, sometimes for weeks, before finding a pocket, which may yield only a few crystals.