Can anyone give me a possible year and value on this squash?!




From my non-professional view, the stones are very poor and mostly even broken. The design is poor, craftsmanship as well very poor, and badly unprofessionally cleaned.
I would not pay more than the silver value, if it’s silver at all. There is not a lot of information on the squash blossom, not even a weight … with no information given there might be little information in return.

It weighs 278gms only one of the turq stones is cracked, the rest are all intact and natural unstablized turquoise. Pearls are handmade with a couple noted to be missing on the strand

Hope this helps

The beads are not handmade, but are textbook bench beads. Search the site for many posts on bench beads.

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I strongly disagree. It looks like sterling, and i only see one stone with a potential crack through the matrix. This looks like 70s/80s design elements on the blossoms, and everything seems to match well and be proportional for the piece, other than the transition area from two strands to one where it looks like maybe some missing bench beads. The stones are not particularly remarkable or attributable to a specific mine, but they are nice enough, color matched, and not calibrated cabs, which tells me they were hand shaped. You can probably find many comparables sold on ebay for an idea of value for similar pieces. i think it is definitely worth more than scrap value.

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1970’s, looks to be Royston maybe, nice looking, in my opinion (just an opinion) $700-$900 retail

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This is a low quality production piece most likely made sometime in the 70’s. While the stations are hand made, the silver beads are not. The quality of the workmanship reflects the fact that this piece was made in a hurry as part of a piecework lot of similar items produced for quick sale.

Stone quality is bottom of the barrel. This kind of material sold for from a couple of cents to five cents a carat in the 70s. It’s rare to find turquoise cabs in quality this poor these days because it doesn’t sell, and no one is bothering to cut it.

Value is frankly whatever someone is willing to pay for it, but that usually isn’t very much because there’s a ton of this stuff sitting around for sale at swap meets, gun shows, and flea markets.

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Very interesting to read so very different opinions.

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These beads appear to be broken…


I kinda like the shape of the blossoms, but I would think this would need to be fixed to have much chance of being able to be sold.

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I thought I’d throw this squash blossom into this discussion since it’s a similar style to this squash. I bought this along with a group of NA jewelry for a good price; they belonged to the seller’s grandmother. I’ve assumed it was c. 60 - 70ish. It’s a smaller, lower end squash and I don’t care for this style or the beads. However I’ve always liked the turquoise, especially a couple of the cabs! Any thoughts on the turquoise?


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Again my personal feeling, nothing like professional opinion … I like the stones, and when properly cleaned this could be nice. Not amazing but okay.

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@Bmpdvm, I like your squash! The blue of the stones is lovely. I would not clean it; I like it as is.

@gt75, be very careful about “professional” cleaning. People who are not familiar with Native jewelry may shine something up way too much. That could bring down value for a lot of buyers.

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Workmanship is similar to the OPs squash. This one is also likely a handmade piecework squash produced in a batch of like items for quick sale. Turquoise is treated, larger and of better quality, a real step up, maybe Kingman. Material like this sold for ~ 7-12 cents a carat back in the day.

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Thank you all so much for your input! I’m still learning and doing a lot of research so all advice and knowledge is appreciated! :smile:

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