Help with natural flaws versus damage

Identifying & Discovering
1

I’m a new member and have just become interested in quality turquoise. I am confused on what is considered chips or damages in the turquoise versus flaws in the stone that might be considered acceptable. I have attached a photo of a stone in question. It is just a portion of the stone as I didn’t want to include the full picture as this item is available for sale.

I had this piece in hand and with magnification you could see in some of the darker areas that it appeared chipped and not level with the rest of the stone. To me it looked like it was down to the rock in these areas. So my question is above are these considered natural flaws or damaged? Does this bring the value of in these older pieces?

Also, I was told this was Ajax does that look correct? Thanks for any insight

Trying to add a photo not sure if I’m doing it correctly

ajax.png464×920 481 KB

2

A natural stone is going to have flaws, you judge a piece of turquoise on hardness and color. If it has a crack that is definitely not good, but it is not uncommon to fell rough where the host rock and matrix meet. Could be Ajax, just to difficult to tell from image. Could be fox, pilot mountain. Thanks for sharing.

3

Hi Jason,
Thanks for you time and knowledge. I was wondering if what I was seeing was host rock but it looked more like the turquoise was chipped and I was seeing the rock below the surface. It is not a ruff area it is definitely indented in six different areas and they are all circular in form. I like the piece but worried it could get worse. I just need to decide whether to keep or return.

Glad to have found this forum. Lots to learn.