Mahavir Gems

Turquoise is insoluble in all accept heated hydrochloric acid. Its streak is normally a pale bluish white and its fracture is always conchoidal, leaving a distinct waxy lustre.

Colour: blue, blue-green, green (normally termed Turquoise Blue )

Luster: Waxy to sub-vitreous

Streak: Bluish white

Moh's scale hardness: 5–6

Specific gravity:2.6–2.9

The color turquoise is usually associated with meanings of refreshing, feminine, calming, sophisticated, love, joy, tranquility, patience, intuition, energy, wisdom, serenity, good luck, spiritual grounding, wholeness, creativity, emotional balance, friendship,  and loyalty. Turquoise is also supposed to brings good fortune, good luck, and a happy life—All things everybody wants!

The Turquoise gem is given on the 11th Anniversary as a gift.  It is also considered as a gemstone for the people born in the month of December.

Turquoise is considered as a Zodiac Stone of Sagattarius

Turquoise is one of the zodiac stones for those who are born under the sign, Sagattarius, between November 22 to  December 21, the end of harvest season and the beginning of winter. Sagittarians are considered to be optimistic, kind, and adventurous, and their outlook on life is extremely positive.

Turquoise is a very unique gemstone, normally cut in a cabochon form because its opaque (the gem is not transparent). This gem comes in a variety of shades of pale blue to blue & black, and also a blue/green with black. The gem can be very costly if its from a rare locality. Navajo people strongly believed turquoise stones were pieces of the sky that had fallen to Earth. 

As a secondary mineral, turquoise forms by the action of percolating acidic aqueous solutions during the weathering and oxidation of pre-existing minerals.

Turquoise is nearly always cryptocrystalline and massive and assumes no definite external shape. Crystals, even at the microscopic scale, are exceedingly rare. Typically the form is vein or fracture filling, nodular, or botryoidal in habit.

Turquoise was among the first gems to be mined, and many historic sites have been depleted, though some are still worked to this day. These are all small-scale operations, often seasonal owing to the limited scope and remoteness of the deposits. Most are worked by hand with little or no mechanization. However, turquoise is often recovered as a byproduct of large-scale copper mining operations, especially in the United States.

Iran has been an important source of turquoise for at least 2,000 years. It was initially named by Iranians "pērōzah" meaning "victory", and later the Arabs called it "fayrūzah", which is pronounced in Modern Persian as "fīrūzeh". 

Since at least the First Dynasty (3000 BCE) in ancient Egypt, and possibly before then, turquoise was used by the Egyptians and was mined by them in the Sinai Peninsula. This region was known as the Country of Turquoise by the native Monitu.

The Southwest United States is a significant source of turquoise; Arizona, California (San Bernardino, Imperial, Inyo counties), Colorado (Conejos, El Paso, Lake, Saguache counties), New Mexico (Eddy, Grant, Otero, Santa Fe counties) and Nevada (Clark, Elko, Esmeralda County, Eureka, Lander, Mineral County and Nye counties) are (or were) especially rich. The deposits of California and New Mexico were mined by pre-Columbian Native Americans using stone tools, some local and some from as far away as central Mexico. Cerrillos, New Mexico is thought to be the location of the oldest mines; prior to the 1920s, the state was the country's largest producer; it is more or less exhausted today. Only one mine in California, located at Apache Canyon, operates at a commercial capacity today.

Turquoise prehistoric artefacts (beads) are known since the fifth millennium BCE from sites in the Eastern Rhodopes in Bulgaria – the source for the raw material is possibly related to the nearby Spahievo lead–zinc ore field.[8]

China has been a minor source of turquoise for 3,000 years or more. Gem-quality material, in the form of compact nodules, is found in the fractured, silicified limestone of Yunxian and Zhushan, Hubei province. Additionally, Marco Polo reported turquoise found in present-day Sichuan. Most Chinese material is exported, but a few carvings worked in a manner similar to jade exist. In Tibet, gem-quality deposits purportedly exist in the mountains of Derge and Nagari-Khorsum in the east and west of the region respectively.

Other notable localities include: Afghanistan; Australia (Victoria and Queensland); north India; northern Chile (Chuquicamata); Cornwall; Saxony; Silesia; and Turkestan.

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