Native American Turquoise Jewelry: How to Identify Genuine Number 8 Turquoise in Indian Jewelry

Native American jewelry expert Dr. Mark Sublette of Medicine Man Gallery with 25 years experience in the Indian art business gives tips on how to identify genuine early turquoise in Navajo jewelry. Excellent tutorial for beginning to advanced collectors on the characteristics one looks for when buying Native American old pawn jewelry with turquoise.
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Native American Turquoise Jewelry: How to Identify Genuine Number 8 Turquoise in Indian Jewelry
Today I want to talk to you about something that's very difficult to learn, but if you spend a little time watching these videos and do a little research, it really can make your life a lot easier, and that has to do with turquoise: this kind of stuff.
This is a Jocla, and it's genuine all-natural turquoise, and one of the things that is important when you're evaluating Native American jewelry of any type (and it has turquoise), is to know what the stone is. Now, any person that you ask dealer-wise will always probably come up with some kind of identification. It may be very limited like, “It's a Nevada turquoise,” or “it's a natural turquoise,” but what you really want to get into is the granular - what type of turquoise, and what I'd like to discuss is Number Eight turquoise today.
Number Eight is a very interesting mine. It was founded in 1925; that's when they originally found it up in Eureka County, Nevada. By 1929 it was open, and a guy named Buffington and another guy named Springer actually bought the mine, and started mining number eight turquoise. It had many different owners over the years; it was an early turquoise, so one of the things you want to realize when you see a bracelet (maybe something like this), if the mine wasn't even open, then it couldn't be from that area.
So, Number Eight is early - it was founded by 1925 and by 1929 it was open, so if you get a piece that's in the 20s or 30s that looks like it's number eight, it could be. A genuine Number Eight has a very high-domed appearance; it can be very dense.
The coloration really will tell you a lot about Number Eight turquoise, as well as the matrix. It can go from a very light blue all the way to a little darker blue, but the matrix is what is the key. You look for a brown matrix or a black matrix, and things like black-matrix number eight are some of the highest-grade turquoise that you can find, and can even bring up to a hundred dollars a carat.
Some of the examples that you can see are these images, which show very fine matrix spider webs, and that's really what it's called: spider web turquoise. Now, there are pieces that look very similar, like Chinese, but it has a different kind of matrix. It's much more regular (in my opinion), and once you've seen enough, it really kind of pops out. Chinese turquoise is still a very high-grade turquoise, but if you're paying for Number Eight, you want to get Number Eight turquoise.
So, remember, when you're looking at any kind of jewelry and it has a nice stone, and it has matrix, then you need to try to identify what kind of turquoise it is. One of the examples here shows a bracelet that has a beautiful matrix, but I can't identify it as Number Eight. It just doesn't have the same webbing that I would expect, and the inclusions that I would want to see with that kind of genuine stone.
So, when you're looking for turquoise in Native American jewelry: remember color, matrix, and density are all important, and try to identify the mine. Thanks.