If Jay King and Carolyn Pollack make such a fuss over the turquoise being sleeping beauty...

From my personal experience, the purchase receipts should mention "Sleeping Beauty" in the title of the description. If it does NOT - then in order to be authentic - you would have to have your turquoise evaluated or analyzed by a jeweler. I have sold my turquoise on EBay but usually have documentation to prove where it came from. If I don't have that - and don't want the expense of having a jewelry store confirm it - I don't claim it to be Sleeping Beauty. I can say it only looks like it to me.

Even Sleeping Beauty comes in slightly different shades than the Robin Eggs Blue they claim. And even some of it, has a small amount of matrix in it. But, it is becoming higher in price and if you can prove it's the real Sleeping Beauty - you'll get more money for your item.

If you claim it's real and the buyer proves it is not - you will suffer conflict with the sale. Older authentic Sleeping Beauty pieces should bring more money, as well.

Your last question - in the last few years of selling on EBay, there was no stamp (in the past) on jewelry items to identify the turquoise as Sleeping Beauty. On Sterling Silver jewelry - it is important to make sure the jewelry is stamped 925 (at least). Sometimes, this stamp is hard to find or see. I have a 40x power jeweler's loupe to help my eyes make sure it's there.

Not sure this helps - but that is my experience.

The Sleeping Beauty mantra is already getting old. First and foremost, these channels live or die on volume sales. It seems likely that each has 'encouraged' their vendors to maximize use of this stone, which might indicate it's relatively plentiful and relatively low cost. It's a pretty stone and that's more or less the reason to buy it if one chooses to do so, but I'd hedge any bets on it being an 'investment'.

Thanks ladies, much appreciated.

I think in a couple years the Sleeping Beauty hype will die. These ""designers"" will start trumpeting their new sources of turquoise.

On 8/16/2014 stevieb said:

The Sleeping Beauty mantra is already getting old. First and foremost, these channels live or die on volume sales. It seems likely that each has 'encouraged' their vendors to maximize use of this stone, which might indicate it's relatively plentiful and relatively low cost. It's a pretty stone and that's more or less the reason to buy it if one chooses to do so, but I'd hedge any bets on it being an 'investment'.

Yeah, I always get a kick when they say that the mines are closed/closing due to the depletion of the stone. So hurry up and come get yours before it's gone!!

Sheesh

I had ordered the Eclissi Sleeping Beauty turquoise face watch that was supposedly all sterling silver and 14k gold as it outer layer. Long story, short - it was a stunning piece the clasp was defective, the gold color layer showed some areas of tarnish and no where was there a card or stamp saying the piece had SB turquoise, SS or 14K, It was $250 before S&H and tax. Returned and would not purchase another for that cost and those reasons.

On 8/20/2014 kachina624 said: Many turquoise mines have closed, some years ago. Turquoise from those mines has escalated in price but there wasn't the huge volume of it that there is on SB. The older SB with matrix is much better quality than the clear that they're selling now. They were selling some of Paul Deasy's stuff on SHQ last night that looked like it was anemic, extremely poor quality.