Turquoise

Item Description

An attractive natural Turquoise specimen Kingman, Arizona. The piece is not polished or modified in any way. It should be noted that these specimens have been labeled as Turquoise, but could certainly be a mix of Turquoise and Planerite. Genuine Turquoise is rather uncommon in nature, despite the fact that almost blue copper phosphate gets labeled as Turquoise these days. Years ago, Gene Foord did some work on the Turquoise group, and its proper description, and noted that many samples of "Turquoise" turned out to be Planerite (see http://www.minersoc.org/pages/Archive-MM/Volume_62/62-1-93.pdf for more info). Nonetheless, because this piece is from Arizona, where Copper is abundant, I think that it is a bit safer to keep this piece labeled as Turquoise, especially since the color is so amazingly rich and BLUE, not a soft bluish hue that is often associated with the material. It's not terribly common to have an opportunity to obtain a richly colored unpolished SPECIMEN of Turquoise like this.