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Sleeping Beauty Turquoise 76 cts.

The Sleeping Beauty, mine located in Globe, Arizona is an active mine producing a wide range of turquoise that is highly prized for it's solid soft blue color, with little or no matrix. The color of the turquoise ranges from a deep royal blue to a light sky blue. The mine originally was worked for copper and gold but during the last four decades it has produced gemstone quality turquoise in quantities to satisfy the commercial market. In general, the miners lease portions of the “dumps” and sort turquoise from there.

There is a small town in south central Italy, near Naples, famous for its cameos. Their need for huge quantities of this material over the years have always kept the supply down and demand high. The clear blue is reminiscent of old Persian turquoise, and is without doubt the most preferred and prized by Europeans, both for cameos as well as in bead or jewelry form.

There are two sister mines nearby, called the Bluebird and Castle Dome mines. The Bluebird produced some of the world’s most beautiful azurite. This material is a copper oxide and also contains malachite, crysacolla as well as a mineralized copper or cuprite. This is a rare and undervalued gem stone that has all but disappeared from the marketplace. Castle Dome was a turquoise producer, considered by many to be harder than Sleeping Beauty and of superior color.

This parcel consists of 76cts and priced at $600 or $7.89 per ct. Individual cabs available at $8.50 per ct. email or call me for details

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