| Original Message: Re: Anyone recognize this jasper? |
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I've worked in Several jasper mines and prepared shipping containers of jasper to be shipped to China for bead making.Jasper deposits are now changing name with changing ownership. Everyone seems to be fighting for the name " Freedom Jasper " or simply making up a name with no historical context. The other problem is that many of the deposits are huge with a vast array of material within the deposit. Miners often curate the rough they sell so as it maintains an identity on the market with types they believe less marketable piled to the side. Most of the jasper going to China was mine run which means blast a deposit and screen out the small debris and send the rest off in shipping containers. Thus the typical and atypical are shipped together. Some of your jasper has characteristics of medium grades of a certain group of Mexican agates and the remainder looks like the voluminous low grade from those deposits. A certain amount of jasper rough has been made into beads in factories in Mexico in the last 20 years so they may have been made there.A lot of the stone that the Chinese mine in China and sell as jasper is actually various figured limestone which can approximate jasper well but which is not as durable.
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