Hi everybody. This is my first post. I recently bought a bunch of cabochons which were said by the seller to be “Apache Blue”, but when I hold them up to the light, I can actually see through parts of three of the pieces. how can I tell if they are Turquoise
, or something else?
Hi I’m sorry but the photos are terrible. Your lighting is the fail. Can you try again in natural light so we can see the stones?
I was trying to backlight these to show how the light passes through portions of them. I’ll take a few more outside.
Gotcha. It’s very irregular to see light passing through a finished piece of turquoise (why would it?). If you can photograph their profiles that would be helpful too.
@hockeydoc1020 Thank you for posting the cabs in natural light. Sorry to say but, none of these look like turquoise to me. Perhaps they’re a manmade material? That backlit one you can see through gives me pause. Just my 2 cents worth, and I hope I’m wrong about all this.
I didn’t think so either, although I did read somewhere that stones like these with a lot of gem silica can also be valuable. They’re just not what the guy who sold them to me said they were. Thanks for your input!
I’m thinking maybe azuro-malachite. Or something like that.
Just my two cents, but I believe those cabs to be Gem Silica, possibly from what was the Miami Inspiration Copper District in Arizona.
Silica is a hard material (7 on the Mohs Scale) and is composed of minerals, typically Chrysocolla and Chalcedony, compressed and combined under immense pressure and heat over time. The translucence is a defining characteristic.
I don’t believe your cabs to be turquoise. But that is not necessarily a bad thing as some silica is worth more than turquoise.
@Bisquitlips Thanks for posting this information. I’m not at all familiar with Gem Silica. After a quick online search, I came across several GS cabs that look similar to the ones posted by @hockeydoc1020 (including some translucence). This seems like a better outcome than the OP’s cabs being a manmade material (like I had thought).
Yeah, I don’t believe yours are man-made.
In my cab working day back in the 1970s, I had a gorgeous piece of GS that I worked on for hours and hours and hours. And a really long time after that!
I finally got it down to the polishing phase and cracked it on its final shine as I got it too hot. I still have that cab and every time I look at it, I get that sick feeling in my stomach just like the day I cracked it almost 50 years ago. I learned a lot that day… Mostly about patience.
Thank you! I think they’re nice looking stones. It’s good to know I may be right about the GS.
