Dear Yoel,

Indeed you have a statue made in China and it looks like its made of lapis lazuli stone. But; many cheap minerals and gemstones can be dyed to imitate lapis. Poor quality jasper, white howlite, spinel, sodalite or calcite can be used for this purpose. That makes it hard to judge from pictures. Your statue has two problems; one is easy to detect, the head went of once and and is put back with glue I think. The other thing is; if this was a big piece of lapis Lazuli then the start price before cutting the stone would be $ 1000 and more for 9 lbs. Usually you see that expensive material is cut very nicely with a lot of detail and time effort to make it worthwhile using the stone for the image being created. You statue is not very well cut. I see its ( partly ) machine cut and although it is not badly done you really would expect a better quality cutting of such a big piece. There is only one way to know for sure and that is ; let the stone be tested by a GIA institute. Its not cheap but then you are sure. For know I will use Lapis Lazuli as starting point for my estimation but my estimation will be conditional because I am not sure about the stone. I also take the damage in consideration in the price tag.