Turquoise nugget (complete)

Item Description

This is a very large, very pure, undamaged and complete turquoise nugget! Fran Allegra purchased this at Tucson one year from an old collection and has had it for ages. It had no location data but "Nevada" when he bought it. It masses 650 grams (near 2 pounds) and looks heavier, but this is actually a relatively lightweight mineral species. In researching this, we did go to MINDAT for help locations - based on what we see there, it looks like this should be material from White Horse Mine, Cortez District, Lander Co., Nevada, USA (link is at : https://www.mindat.org/photoscroll.php?frm_id=pscroll&cform_is_valid=1&searchbox=turquoise+from+lander). It is hard to value something like this, but in the end you must look at it as a large nugget of a valuable "gem and lapidary species" mineral, and it actually is quite beautiful. We are no experts on the value of Nevada turquoise in particular, but it would sure seem like this is an amazingly large specimen from a weird locality that is actually more interesting for that even though if it were from Arizona or Mexico, it would be worth a fortune as carving rough! And yet, it still is carving quality - but from Nevada. Personally, as a mineral collector, I find this much better (as long as it is not cut up to make belt buckles).