Come To The Stagecoach For So Much More!
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It has been a while since my previous article and I wanted to check in with all of you. We have been very busy with jewelry here at Stagecoach even despite our busy Halloween season. Gary has been making new items and we have some new things coming from our friends at Supersmith. Let’s dive in and discuss some of the things that we have been working on.
Gary has been making lots of new turquoise jewelry for us to drool over. He began using a collection of Kingman Turquoise stones that he purchased earlier this year. Kingman, in general, is not uncommon here at Stagecoach. It is the last remaining large turquoise mine production that is still operating in the United States. Naturally, a good portion of our jewelry features this stone. However, this mine is such a large operation that there are lots of different looks and qualities of material found here. The stones that Gary uses are high-grade and completely natural.
These recent stones in particular have a usual look that is quite different from most other Kingman Turquoise. They have a soft, almost matte-blue color along with a darker blue matrix. Some of these have brown splotches mixed in with this matrix as well. The main color varies from nearly white to a dull robin’s egg. Please do not mistake the words “dull” and “matte” as a negative description. These stones really are lovely, full of unique character that is rare in turquoise.
Take a look at Gary's Handmade Jewelry here. It constantly changes as he creates new items and others sell. Keep in mind that we always have more in our store than shown on the website.
Let us move on to something quite delightful that we did in the last month. We had a customer who was interested in some Egyptian Turquoise jewelry. Egyptian Turquoise was some of the world’s first exposure to this beautiful stone. It was coveted by Pharaohs more than 7,000 years ago. You can read about the History of Turquoise in our two-part blog post.
It took some time but we were finally able to connect with a turquoise miner from that area of the world. He showed us his current selection and we picked out a few stones. We had hoped that the stones were as nice as they appeared in pictures because it is always a little difficult to tell for sure without seeing them in person. For this reason, we have typically avoided purchasing stones online, even through our trusted sources. Gary likes to inspect his turquoise stones, get a feel for them, and look at their thickness and exact cuts, all things that are much easier in person. We took a gamble this time and were pleased with what we received.
The miner sent the stones and we received them surprisingly fast. The Egyptian turquoise has a beautiful deep blue color with a dark matrix. Gary went on to make a couple of different pieces of jewelry using these that turned out very nice. While we definitely will not give up our high-grade American turquoise anytime soon, this Egyptian material was really fantastic and it was pretty neat to have some of this. It is certainly not something that you see often and few people have a chance to own a piece of genuine Egyptian turquoise. We may even get a little more of this in the future!
This is the time of year when we begin preparing for the Christmas season. This entails several different processes, including a store transformation and some product orders. Without a doubt, the most exciting pre-Christmas task on our list is to stock up our David Rosales jewelry collection. David is the designer of our most popular Native American jewelry line and his work is just fabulous. We order jewelry from him throughout the year but typically place large orders only two times. David and his team are already preparing a shipment for us and we cannot wait for it to arrive. I cannot tell you exactly what is coming yet but I know there will be some gorgeous pieces of Native American jewelry. They sent us a teaser picture of one piece from their popular Blue Sky collection and I was floored. It was unlike any other piece we have had from them and I am excited to see it in person. Stay tuned for all of the new David Rosales jewelry coming soon!
We decided to do something fun this year for Christmas. Gary is currently working on a new piece of jewelry specifically for the Christmas season. Yes, Gary makes jewelry throughout the year but we decided to do something a bit different this time. We are going to be ornery and not show it until a specific, currently undecided date closer to the holidays. I will have a special unveiling, shown first to our email subscribers. Just to pique your interest, I will give you a couple of small tidbits of information today. First, you can naturally expect this piece of jewelry to be something special given the buildup that we are creating. One specific detail that I will offer is that it will showcase my personal favorite stone that Gary currently has in his collection. I will go a step further and say that it may be one of my all-time favorites. That’s it, that is all that I can tell you right now, partly because this piece of jewelry is not even complete yet. Stay tuned for more about this special piece and be sure to subscribe to our email list to hear exactly when this will be unveiled.
That is about it for this Stagecoach update. As you can see, we have some fun and exciting things coming soon, including new Native American jewelry and a special secret piece that Gary is working on. I cannot wait to show you more! As always thank you for reading and helping to support Stagecoach. Please let me know if you have any questions!
Skylar Glandon
Author