“Looking for a quick mine ID and valuation check on this vintage Navajo ring hand-stamped by Thomas Tso (T.Tso mark). It features a beautiful shadowbox setting with Mediterranean coral and a blue-green turquoise stone showing a sandy, tan matrix. Leaning toward Royston or possibly Pilot Mountain. Any insights from the experts here would be greatly appreciated!”
Welcome to Turquoise People, but unfortunately we’re not able to give a “quick mine ID,” because without provenance it is impossible to say exactly where a particular piece of turquoise originated, plus your stone is somewhat generic looking (simply meaning that there isn’t anything really unusual about it). More than likely it would be Kingman, because that is the most prolific turquoise out there. However that is just an educated guess on my part. If you’re looking at selling it you should NOT claim it to be from any particular mine since there is no proof.
And I have a question for you; why is all of your copy in quotation marks and italics? Is that simply an AI paragraph? AI constantly gets stuff wrong about Native American jewelry.
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Im no sure why the italics. I didn’t use ai, I just typed it in. Thanks so much for your response!
Actually now that I think about it it was ai that formulated the question!
I figured. AI claims to know all kinds of stuff about turquoise and NA jewelry that is just flat out wrong. No way to know what mine that small stone came from. We often get very frustrated on here with AI claims.
And not just AI - sellers constantly claim to know turquoise origin when they really have no clue; they just think things sell better with some sort of mine listed. Separate turquoise stones from most mines can look completely different from each other or look like turquoise from another mine, which is why at best it’s educated guessing. Sometimes the artist or a legitimate seller will have information from where they bought the stone or where it originally came from, and if they don’t have it they will be honest, and say they don’t know. I would rather have someone be truthful with me than make stuff up.
That does look to be his hallmark. Often AI gets that all wrong too, because there are so many Asian imitations out there. This is from a well-respected book on Native American hallmarks.
As far as dollar value, most of us on here are not comfortable giving that, because we’re not appraisal experts. Maybe look up his work online and see what it is selling for.
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Thank you so much for you time!
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You’re welcome!
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