My Very Own Fake Chinese Turquoise Nugget
You know the old bromide which states if something is too good to be true it probably is?
It is still true.
Turquoise prices have just about doubled in the last year to @ $20.00 an ounce for the really clean stuff. I use chips for inlays in wood working.
I decided to do a little research on alternatives to Arizona Turquoise. I found that a lot of turqoise was coming out of China and the quality (of the real stuff) was pretty good.
Ebay was the first place I started and I found a guy who had a good feedback rating and was selling polished specimans for what looked like a really good price. Break one of those up and I'd have at least several years worth of inlay material.
He claimed to be an honest seller of minerals.
I saw a fourteen ounce speciman for sale. With shipping included the total would be around $60.00.
That figured out to about $4.20 an ounce, which was a heck of a lot better than the prices in the states.
I had a few reservations about ordering something from China but I went ahead and made the purchase. I used Paypal because they provide pretty good protection.
One week later the nugget arrived. It was well packaged and was the same as the photo on Ebay.
Imagine my surprise when I broke a chunk off the end and found what looked like a white piece of epoxy dyed blue.
I sent the honest purveyor of minerals an email about the fake rock and offered to send photos.
He asked for pictures and promptly refunded me my money much to everyone's surprise.
Well, maybe not exactly so mush as a surprise in retrospect.
Main mistake I made in dealing with this guy:
I left positive feedback before breaking the rock open. You cannot retract feedback I should have checked the thing out first.
Verify the authenticity of your purchace before leaving feedback. If the thing is a fraud, try to get your money back first and then leave negative feedback. That is the only way I know of to score some points against repeat scammers. Get them off that 100% feedback rating.
I kind of made it back up by emailing some of the other prospective buyers of these 'world class' specimans letting them know about the scam.
This guy knowingly sells fakes and is still selling them.
He sells polished specimans because odds are the buyer is not going to break open a museum quality piece, thus exposing the fraud.
If he gets caught, he immediately settles and refunds the money. Most people are happy enough with that and they don't push the issue.
I decided to push but still have not figured out how to report this to Ebay. They do not seem to have a place to report frauds once you have settled out of court, so to speak.
In the interim I am going to publish this as an Ebay Guide. Perhaps someone reading this can navigate the Ebay mailing system to report ongoing fraud or email me - ddgnevada at myway.com and I will be more than happy to follow through..
I recieved a few emails from other people who bought from this guy and some of his stuff is genuine. He seems to readily mix in fraudulent items with the real ones.
Large Turquise nuggets from China however most likely not genuine at those bargain basement prices you see them listed at.
There is a site called theVug.com who I wish I would have visited before I made the purchase. They now have a picture of my fake rock on their web site as well. If you are interested in fakes and forgeries in the mineral world, they have a great section dealing with just that.
My fake Chinese nugget it seems, may have achieved its color via a nice overnight dunking in TidyBowl cleaner.
Cleans Toilets and Dyes Howlite too!
I did get four ounces of turquoise from another Ebay dealer for $30.00, which is the real stuff and will last me quite a while.
One thing about being the proud owner of a piece of fake Chinese turquoise is that it is quite the conversation piece.
If you would like to see some pictures and documentation of my experience with this 'honest' purveyor of minerals you can find it at ddgnevada.com under the woodworking section.
I also see someone actually left some negative feedback:
Buyer baz(24) Aug-29-06 10:46 Fake plastic immatation turquoise!!! RIP OFF!!! Buyers beware!!
Reply by Art: You don't understand the mineral, Make the false Feedback for me is unfair ! ! !
Oh really, Art? What is there not to understand about fake plastic?
September Update:
Ever Seen Real Chinese Turquoise Nuggets?
Well, I haven't. A Rock and mineral show came to town and I decided to see if anyone had genuine turqouise from China and there were actually quite a few specimens for sale.
The seven dollar specimen is from Tibet and is actually pretty neat looking stuff. The other two are from the Hubei Province in China from two different mines. This is the same area the nugget fraud artists claim their works of art come from. I double checked with a few other vendors before I left and was assured that this stuff is the real item and those two nuggets actually come from the Hubei Province.
This is a test. See if you can choose the fake. If at this point you did not choose the baby blue and white nugget on top then sorry, I can't help you.
A few other items of mention: I am now seeing fakes on Ebay that are smaller and more closely resemble the coloring of Arizona Sleeping Beauty Turquoise. Sometimes they have these offical looking little stickers on them. They also have this deal that hides you, the prospective bidder from everyone else. Now why would one do that with a bid that starts out under a dollar. Some of these guys seem to try to list from Great Britian.
August, 2007 Update.
You know, one thing I did not think of was all the fakes out there that exist in the beading market. Jan was kind enough to write in and provide me with some photos of fake turquoise beads:
I have recently purchased several items from 'Pizza-Wok', many being turquoise. One item received has an "unpainted" backside where the "turquoise" is white. It's labelled as egyptian turquoise, however when I looked up egyptian turquoise, it looked nothing like what I bought. What I bought looks like what you bought (fake). Have you checked out that dealer?
Hmmm.......Something looks a little off here.
My response:
No, that is a new dealer to me. I would be rather suspect of Egyptian turquoise at those prices. The real item is pretty expensive, much like Iranian turquoise - some of the most expensive. Anymore when it comes to turquoise, I buy locally where I can get turquoise at reasonable prices. Arizona Sleeping Beauty is finally coming down a bit in price too.
If you do beading and that sort of thing, if you have a Hobby Lobby store where you live, you might check out their beading section. I have bought Malachite, Turquoise and SandStone beads from them and at pretty reasonable prices. I generally crush the beads and use them for inlay materials and when you crush them, they certainly appear real.
I asked one of the sales people about the turquoise and she said the majority of the beads are made of turquoise dust, which is stabilized and formed into beads. I would tend to believe that.
-----------------
I got a little curious about this pizza-wok character after finding one of his listings displayed along side my eBay guide:
A ANCIENT CHINESE TURQUOISE NUGGET Bead Strand 16" PW
And what, pray tell is this?
You will receive: One 16" Strand Bead Size: 25-28x13-15mm A Turquoise Nugget Carat Weight: 294.84 Carats Retail Value: $95.67
Ancient implies old, right? Lets see, whip out my calculator and 295 carats = about 2 ounces and Mr. Wok is selling this rarest of antiquities with a starting bid of .99 cents?
Something smells a little fishy here. Lets take a closer look at those beads:
This must be the rarest of all Turquoise - Ancient Chinese White Turquoise........
Nope, I stand corrected - there actually is Ancient Chinese White Turquoise listed for sale, as well as A Icy Vanilla Eqyptian Turquoise and A Rare African Crocodile Turquoise and Chinese Coconut Cream Turquoise to name a few.
I have a few suggestions: How about Key Lime, Chocolate Chip, Cotton Candy, Deep Purple, Royal Blue, Australian Carmelized Tangerine Opal, and Lemon Scented Turquoise too?
Might as well cover the spectrum.
------------
Use some caution, folks. Some of those fakes are looking pretty good.
If you would like to view some high resolution images of these items, I am updating my site at ddgnevada.com to include these photos -/ wood / fake / Fake Chinese Nugget dot html.
Happy Hunting!
Orignal From: Fake Chinese Turquoise Nuggets
No comments:
Post a Comment