Beautiful bear claw. Appears older.
Sometimes, the retail place selling the piece, engraved ID marks. These would often include the purchase price, seller ID (if a pawn/consignment shop).
Sometimes, artists engraved their initial(s) into a piece.
I tried to sharpen and crop your photo in hopes others might recognize it.
So you are saying this is probably legit dead pawn? I have a ring with a number like this that came from the same guy. It’s a les holden. I found one very similar to the one I have. So I absolutely believe it is his work even tho I don’t have enough experience to be very knowledgeable. I’ve only been doing this a year. I have an eye for older jewelry and if I go after something very aggressively it usually turns out ok
Both was from the same guy
I think the feedback from @fernwood means you’re not looking at a hallmark in the first piece but rather a trader’s marks for in-house bookkeeping purposes, unlike the actual hallmark in the ring. Dead pawn is a whole other subject: something that winds up for resale in a pawn shop is one thing, Native “dead pawn” is something else.
Yeah I got that. Maybe my reply wasnt clear enough. or maybe my previous explanation of the term pawn was inaccurate. which is that trading post, consignment, and even trading post were basically all the same things. Just the way they obtained jewelry was slighty different. But basically all the same