Picked up an older (seller says 30’s or 40’s, and I say 50’s or 60’s) bracelet yesterday. As you can see in the photos, the piece has three nice, chunky pieces of turquoise. Now, I am not an expert, but my best guess as to which mine these stones came from are: Blue Gem, Stone Mountain, and a very outside chance they’re from the Candelaria mine. Your thoughts??? I’ll be doing a separate post in the marks identification category, to see if anyone knows who the maker might be. Thank you!!
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Beautiful turquoise. There is now a testing lab which will give you a comprehensive look at the turquoise and includes whether stabilized or natural and if natural the hardness. A multitude of chemical analyses and ultimately the origin. I had a necklace tested and the report was more than 20 pages. The lab is West Texas Analytical Laboratory in Pampa, TX.
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My understanding when I read the article you linked in another thread was that they narrow it to an area, but not necessarily the exact mine? So if there are numerous mines very close together you probably wouldn’t get the exact one? Or am I wrong in that?
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I was of the impression that they narrow it down pretty well. Of course I was reading Mike Ryan‘s Turquoise in America posts and the Turquoise he is having tested all has provenance. I am going to attach a picture of the front page of my test results for you to look at.
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Got it! Very interesting. Some of the mines like Bisbee would be easier I think, because there’s not other ones close by. I was talking of more maybe like the three mines in the Kingman district or some of the Nevada ones that are very close together.
I probably would never do it, because I don’t think I’d want to spend the money on it, but I imagine it would be helpful at times.
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