What is the difference between stabilized and natural turquoise?

Just a very informative article on turquoise that if you’re interested/addicted to turquoise, it will answer many of the questions you may have and should help you in your decisions regarding shopping for and purchasing. What is the difference between stabilized and natural turquoise? – Garland's

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Thank you @SilverWolf!

I have seen a few pieces of turquoise that looks like there is a light green film on top. I suspect this may be the stabilization film that gets old and becomes opaque. Am I correct or is this something else? Thank you.

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@nanc9354 Hi ~ I’m no expert, but I don’t believe that’s a green film on that cab. It definitely looks like Chinese turquoise to me, possibly Hubei. It’s a very nice turquoise cab, imo.

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I wouldn’t know, if it has become a prgressive thing it could be as you say. For now I’m trying this product Renaissance Micro-Crystalline wax polish. Takes very little and can be safely removed. It was about the only thing mentioned that could be used on turquoise to prevent discloration from happening. So far so good, makes the turquoise shine and is also used to prevent tarnish on silver. Hoping that last one is true, for now I keep them in the jewelry pouches that came with the cuffs and those all go into a wooden box, they come out still shiny, the silver, no need to polish.

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:+1: I’m still a noobe so figured can’t be the only one. There’s so many differences that it makes sense to get all the learning I can in. Oh well, bitten by the turquoise bug…

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I also don’t believe it’s a green film, and think it looks very much like Chinese turquoise (I’m not overly familiar with their mines) due to the particular olivey green color with that matrix. But of course that is just my educated guess :grin:

Hmmm… I wouldn’t put anything on that stone to try to change it.

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If you put topics such as block, stabilized, natural (etc - whatever you’re interested in learning about) turquoise in the search bar/icon above you will get lots of information from this forum.

Thank you for that info!

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Ok. THanks @Patina , @SilverWolf and @Ziacat . I wasn’t really planning on doing anything to the stone. I just thought it didn’t look natural…maybe the old polish turning opaque. But if you think it is normal, then I will take it as that! :hugs:

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I also don’t believe that the green turquoise has a " Stabilizer film". I would put my money on Chinese turquoise possibly from the Qingu mine.

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It looks a lot like Royston Mine turquoise, you can see examples of it on ebay on Nativo Arts. Some of the mines produce a lot of variables in terms of color.

Hmm… It doesn’t look like any Royston I’ve seen. And Nativo Arts gets all kinds of stuff wrong all the time. I’ve pretty much stopped looking at that site.

I know we’re always saying that you can’t tell 100% on turquoise origin without provenance, and if I were selling this piece I wouldn’t claim for sure to know what mine that stone came from. However, Chinese turquoise of this type is pretty distinctive looking.

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Yes, I know that too, always take everything they sell with a grain of salt. But even other than their site I’ve seen it called royston. It’s the whole problem with buying, people are pretty vague about it, the one time I requested it go through ebay’s authenticity, they said they couldn’t authenticate it as what he claimed and that they’ve told them before to stop doing this. I was just trying to put out an informed piece from Garland’s, who I trust to know what they’re selling. Always be leery of anything called Navajo Turquoise, buy from sellers who have a return policy of 30 days so you can take it to a jeweler for appraisal. As for estate or yard sales it helps if you at least have an idea of what the different kinds of turquoise look like and if it seems too good to be true it possibly is, but the opposite is also possible. The real thing isn’t cheap unless the seller is clueless and a lot have been and are, patina’s can be faked too. I guess the best bet is to go traveling through the southwest if you can. And I can say that don’t knock Chinese Turquoise, not that you are, I got a lovely cuff that has a piece of turquoise from Cloud Mountain mine bought from Garlands that looks just like Morenci webbed turquoise mounted on not your usual hopi overlay design. Sooner or later I will take a trip as I suspect they keep a lot of the good stuff for the tourists to buy. It is possible to use trusted sites to educate yourself on the different types of which there are many. Also there are independent people/miners who get permission to search on someones property and who make their own jewelry that is similar in design to NA, not to decieve but out of an appreciation for it. They give it away as in my sisters case, or sell it as such. As for me I’m partial to the blues, others like the greens, I don’t need patina but others buy nothing but.

Yeah, if I were a gambler, I would be willing to bet money that the stone is not Royston. The olive green film-like appearance with the very black webbing is pretty indicative of certain types of Chinese turquoise. Many sellers will claim a stone is Royston (or whatever) when they have no actual clue in order to sell their piece.

I have traveled extensively in the Southwest for decades, and mostly buy my Native art there (so I have seen a lot of turquoise), or in person from the artists (at Native art markets). If you have a chance to get out there, I highly recommend you go :grin: But, same as online, still be VERY picky about where you shop (you will find great recommendations on this site). And I don’t in general think the stores are holding back their best stuff for tourists (the average “tourist” isn’t interested in spending the kind of money necessary to buy good Native American jewelry). Many probably have so much jewelry that putting it all online would be difficult.

I’ve never heard of anything called “Navajo Turquoise.” Sounds like a someone making stuff up, and if a seller told me that I would walk away. An honest seller would say the turquoise mine is unknown rather than make crap up. And I wasn’t knocking Chinese stones, some are truly lovely, although a lot of it out there is not great (there’s also low quality American turquoise, but at one point it seemed like China kinda flooded the market, plus there are many Asian imitations with Chinese turquoise). However, I personally try to only buy American turquoise, just my preference.

I would also add that you can learn much on this site if you read lots of past threads. The collective knowledge here is pretty amazing.

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I’m not perfectly sure what was meant by some places “holding back” jewelry for tourists…(Zia is right, tourists aren’t as a group likely paying $750-1500+ for a bracelet, and so on) except to say, most websites post just a group of what they sell, not a full display of inventory. Garland’s is a good example of that.

And: Nativo is only a retailer with hit-or-miss accuracy.

And: “Royston” is becoming the new “Bisbee,” meaning a default guess by sellers who don’t know what they have but want to attract spending to it.

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But we love LOL’ing at Nativos’s over the top descriptive titles :laughing:

“Royston is becoming the new Bisbee.” I might need to steal that line :grin:

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Extravagant museum worthy astounding spectacular amazing

Which reminds me of one of my all-time favorite bands: Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives

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Now you made me literally LOL :joy:

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