I moderate four Yahoo Groups, where I also post advice about beads. One is about all sorts of beads, and one is devoted to amber:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/beadcollectors/

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/amberisforever/

(Links to each Group can be found in the primary Group.)

The PDF I posted in the Amber Group will explain what you can do to test amber and "amber."

Jamey

Second, there is no substitute to spending a lot of "face time" with beads. When I was starting out with stone beads, I went to a LOT of shows and spent a long time looking and asking questions. You will have to keep an open mind and accumulate experience and information to apply to your own collection. There is a lot of "suspect" information out there, and it takes patience to get good at something like identifying all the varieties of turquoise, which is a good material to start with because there are so many, as well as so many imitations.

When buying, I decided early on to only make "significant" purchases from sellers that I knew personally, or was referred to by someone I knew. An example would be buying an authentic antique Tibetan piece such as what you mentioned. I would hesitate to buy something like that unless I was really comfortable with the reputation of the seller, since I would not be able to tell the authenticity myself.

For learning more about turquoise, you could start by purchasing a range of turquoise "products" from a dealer like Fire Mountain, so you have examples on hand to compare to other beads as you browse the bead racks at shows.

And of course, this forum is a great place to post questions, although there are limits to what can be determined from photos.

Good luck with your beads and above all, have FUN!

Thanks to all!

newtoit!

The turquoise mined in China is very beautiful. It is a very nice stone. It is traded all over the world, as it was long ago traded, into Tibet and elsewhere. It was common for stone to go to India first to be shaped into beads by the established lapidary industry.

Be thankful if it was real turquoise and not one of the endless types of dyed and faked turquoise.

I know you were the seller, and not the buyer, but some of the riskiest items to buy online at the auction site are turquoise, amber, coral, and precious metals. Mis-identification is widespread. I've been a victim. Tiring of returning items, I now avoid certain categories unless I feel very confident with the seller and the photos.

Price is also a huge indicator of quality, nice turquoise is expensive. though most consumers either do not know, or do not care about. Regarding turquoise, one of the most important attributes is hardness. Good quality turquoise is hard, and you can feel it when you handle it. Dense, hard turquoise will be warm to the touch under the intense hot lights of a dealers display case. In the same case lower quality turquoise will not be holding the heat because it is not as dense. In converse, high quality in normal ambient temperature will be cool to the touch, and less dense turquoise would be warm.

Stabilization is the coating of turquoise with wax, or some kind of spray on plastic stuff. Some people want their turquoise to be stabilized so as to insure that it will not change color from wear and skin oil. I do not think that stabilization is on its own a bad thing, I think of it as if you were to oil wood. The wood that is lacquered is still wood, it is just protected. It is good to know if your turquoise is stabilized. Though very excellent turquoise does not need protection because it is so hard. Any piece of turquoise can have different hardnesses and could change different colors within the same stone, that is the charm.

http://www.bwsmigel.info/GEOL.115.ESSAYS/Gemology.Turquoise.html

We will mention those in out forum and blogs.

For several years Fire Mountain Gems mislabeled blue dyed magnesite as "chalk Turquoise" describing it as a real turquoise without the copper. 10 months ago their ask the expert column posted "Chalk turquoise is a form of natural turquoise that has a white chalk-like consistency. It has the same chemical composition as turquoise, only without the copper (it's the copper that causes the blue turquoise color). Chalk turquoise is also a bit softer than regular turquoise. It is dyed pleasing colors and stabilized with resin to produce beads that are hard enough to use in jewelry. Chalk turquoise is considered less valuable than regular turquoise because it does not contain the minerals that create the rich blue and green colors."

Turquoise is a hydrated phosphate of copper, aluminum and often iron. It MUST have copper or it is a different mineral. FMG's description is not accurate.

A google search for "Chalk turquoise is a form of natural turquoise" shows the many sites that quote this inaccurate description.

Dyed magnesite is an imitation turquoise.
I agree with other posters that most "Tibetan" turquoise originated in China. Chinese turquoise comes in many different qualities and colors - some is used natural but most is now stabilized with resin.

The picture below from my Flickr photo pages shows genuine Mexican turquoise in natural and stabilized form. The large piece is natural Mexican turquoise (Competos mine, Sonora) showing the typical pyrite inclusions. This is soft , very light blue turquoise often called "chalk turquoise" that must be stabilized before it is useful in jewelry. The blue nuggets around the rough have been stabilized in plastic resin. In a few cases the resin did not penetrate to the center of the nugget causing the paler center in the cracked open nuggets.

My own business (Rings & Things) did it recently when we added a green bead with brown markings as the "Afghanistan jade" that the seller called it. It was not the same as the serpentine often called "Afghan jade" but it was very attractive and reasonably priced. On close inspection I discovered that it had a green coating that could be scraped off. The material under the coating was much less green but still had the brown and tan streaks.

We asked the vendor for more info. After a few back and forth emails they agreed it was coated and offered to send some "rough material" from which it was made. The sample of rough arrived - in the form of a strand of tan/off white beads that looked like the calcite sold as carvings in Mexico as "Mexican onyx."

In the case of "chalk turquoise" I fear FMG's buyers and catalog staff accepted the original descriptive name and never reconsidered it until their customers and my posts started to question the name and description.

Ya gotta be skeptical!

Didn't realize transformation was so marked following treatment - great to see that & have more appreciation for the stabilizing process.

have posted some images of older turquoise - Chinese in origin I believe untreated.
You can thank my 12 week old Siamese kitten for the broken one..

JJ

Turquoise miners and processors refer to soft, pale colored genuine turquoise that must be stabilized for use in jewelry as "chalk turquoise." Some sellers adopted than name for dyed magnesite even though turquoise and magnesite are unrelated minerals.

The picture shows blocks of man made imitation turquoise seen in a supply shop in Bangkok in 2005. Most of this "block" turquoise was made in the US. Imitation "block" stone is made to look like many different stones including lapis, malachite, rhodonite, sugilite and dyed coral.