This is Kevin at Sunwest Silver in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’m here to talk with you about a mine in Globe, Arizona. It’s called Sleeping Beauty. I just want to give you a little history on that mine. It’s a mine that has been shut down now. It’s a very popular mine. It’s known worldwide, well-known. People have been searching for this turquoise for a while because it’s been shut down, and there’s not much available to the marketplace. It first became popular because a lot of people when they would see this color, they would familiarize it with Persian turquoise. Persian turquoise had that Robin’s egg blue and that’s what people look for when they see Sleeping Beauty. Worldwide, that’s probably one of the world’s best known turquoise mines from the States. It’s Sleeping Beauty. For me, it has a lot to do with the fact that it is so similar to the Persian turquoise which for many, many years, that’s what people thought of the turquoise.
Globe is a wonderful place; it has some copper mines in that area. You get a lot of copper in that area. That mine is very prolific. Because of the amount of copper, you get this striking blue that you are seeing in these pieces right now. Robin’s egg blue will be the one you see here. It’s just so clean, so beautiful. It doesn’t have a lot of the spider webbing that you see in other turquoise mines. But that’s not what it was known for. Some mines are known for the spider webbing. Some mines are known just for the straight blue. So you just got to look at each mine differently. In this case, it’s just the blue.
Let me give you an idea of some of the pieces we just did a quick glance on - pieces like this. When you look at it, this is a very nice Navajo piece. It’s all hand-fabricated. Pieces like this, you can find them at Sunwest Silver. We sell them all around the world. This is a great example of what Sleeping Beauty would look like in cabochon finished form. I’m going to show you a little bit of it in the rough. I’m going to show you some beads. Also I want to give you an idea of a few things, like these two pieces, where you see a little bit of a matrix to it. The matrix is just going to be whatever the host rock is around it. Pyrite, you see a little bit of a pyrite in there, but never anything really strong with Sleeping Beauty. It’s just going to be subtle, because it’s really just more of a solid color. You can see this turquoise sometimes go to a little bit of the green, but it’s really known for the blue. That’s where the focus is at.
There is some rough here. I’m actually going to spray this rough, real quick, what it looks like. Let’s give it a color pop here. You can see that it really brings out the blue. That’s why we use water. When you cut and polish this, that’s when you are going to get the best idea of what it’s going to look like after you start working with it. So you really want to see it in the rough. You really want to water it down. That will give you the best perspective of it.
This will be a little fun. I want to see a jar of what I would call potato nuggets. You’ve got potato nuggets in here; you got cabs in here. This is all Sleeping Beauty. So I’m just going to give you some highlights of the material and spread it out here. (Voice drowned out by background noise) ----------- and Robin’s egg blue because that’s exactly what people talk about when they talk about Sleeping Beauty. Now it’s just like candy. You can play with it and it’s wonderful. Here are some of the beads that you will find in it. It’s definitely going to be one of the more sought-after, one of the pricier, price point turquoise because it’s so hard to find. It’s almost never stabilized, although it can be stabilized. Most of it is natural. In this case, these are all natural pieces. We use these whenever we can, but as I say, it’s getting harder and harder to get a hold of.
If you want to take a better look at this material, as far as the quantity, Sunwest Silver has a website, sunwesthandmade.com. Go to that website and look for what we have on site there. Give us a call too, 505-243-3781. We’ll give you as much information as we can on this mine, but it is a mine that is no longer in an active state. It’s probably not going to open again. So if you get a piece of Sleeping Beauty, you are talking about jewelry that is definitely going to increase in value. It’s highly sought-after and we’d love for you to have a piece of it. So give us a call at Sunwest Silver and we’ll see what we can do for you.