Lander Blue is a variety of high-grade spiderweb turquoise from a small hat-claim deposit in Lander County, Nevada. The mine produced an estimated one hundred pounds of cuttable rough across its short working life in the 1970s and now ranks as the most expensive American turquoise on a per-carat basis, regularly priced higher than fine sleeping-beauty turquoise and competitive at the top with Persian Nishapur material.

Origin

The deposit was discovered in 1973 by Rita Hapgood, who staked the claim with her husband Henry Schaezlein in the Shoshone Range north of Battle Mountain, Nevada. The hat-claim format under United States mining law allows a small surface area to be worked under a maintenance-fee regime, and the working face never exceeded a few square metres. The host rock is a sheared, iron-rich shale, and the turquoise occurs as thin seams and nodules with a characteristic dense black to dark-brown spiderweb matrix on a deep, slightly violet-tinged blue background. After the original claim was sold and worked out by the late 1970s, no significant production has come from the location, and material now circulating in the trade is almost entirely old stock or recycled jewellery.

Identification

Three features distinguish Lander Blue from the many Nevada turquoise varieties that are sometimes mis-labelled as it. First, the matrix is exceptionally fine and forms a tight, nearly geometric web with thin, even lines – not the broader irregular blotches of Number 8 or Red Mountain turquoise. Second, the blue is intense and slightly inky, never the bright robin's-egg blue of Sleeping Beauty. Third, the cabochon backs almost always show a thin layer of host shale, since the material is too soft and too thin-seamed to lend itself to deep doming. Reputable trade sources for old stock include the original cutter and dealers who held inventory from the original purchase, with chain-of-custody documentation forming part of the asking price.

Treatment and stabilisation

Most fine-grade Lander Blue is sold untreated. Because the deposit produced so little material, treatment was rarely commercially worthwhile, and stabilised Lander Blue is essentially absent from the legitimate market. The trade convention is that any stabilisation should be disclosed in writing. The Federal Trade Commission Guides require disclosure of all turquoise treatments, and AGTA's coloured-stone disclosure protocol applies the same standard to enhancements affecting durability or appearance.

Market position

Lander Blue's premium comes from the combination of small total production, distinctive appearance, and a robust collector culture in the American Southwest and Native American jewellery trade. Per-carat prices for top-grade rough have risen steadily since the 1990s and have outpaced general turquoise inflation. The risk for buyers is not durability – old stock has decades of stability behind it – but authentication. Synthetic and enhanced turquoise can mimic the colour, and unrelated Nevada material is regularly mis-attributed to the Lander Blue claim. Verification through a known dealer, written provenance, and where appropriate a gemological identification report (which can confirm natural turquoise but cannot confirm specific mine origin from optical and FTIR data alone) are the practical safeguards.