These look to be silver but you can get a test kit on EBay or Etsy very reasonably and test to be sure.
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Could silver turn so brassy? I tried boiled water, aluminum foil & baking soda experiment.
Stayed the same colour.
I should invest in a kit…
It’s really hard to tell. Your first images look like silver. The last one looks like brass.
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Research Devon J Nelson. I have a couple of pieces by him that are also chip inlay. If you search him here on the forum, you should pull up some information. There was another person who had a fairly large collection of his work.
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Agree. Likely Delvin J. Nelson who worked in chip inlay and was fairly prolific.
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When I look at his work it is all silver none of this brassy color. Im wondering if silver can tarnish to this color.
I think it’s time for a test kit! 
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The brassy color is not really showing up in your photos to me. I bet if you polished it up you might find that it looks like sterling.
Thanks for spelling his name correctly. I was on coffee cup number one. LOL
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Did he work in gold? Generally would be marked, but you never know. Go to your local coin shop and ask how much they would charge to test it but only if they can do a non-destructive test ie: no filing or acid.
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The only examples of his work that I came across were silver.
Gold crossed my mind as well but I figured such a hefty piece would’ve been marked? But I agree with you- you never know!
I tried everything to polish it up thinking that it was silver that was just badly tarnished.
Here on the southeast coast I have seen silver tarnish that brassy color. I actually had someone give me several strands of NA beads because she thought they weren’t silver. A little time with a polishing cloth did the trick and one strand I wear a lot because it’s the perfect length. 
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ok…probably make you cringe,but…toothpaste.
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I did try toothpaste
And … ketchup! 
Silver can tarnish to a brassy color but on closer examination it doesn’t look like silver. Honestly needs to be tested with nitric acid (which probably isn’t in your medicine chest or cupboard).
Could be old 1-1/20th gold filled (really just mostly brass), or just plain brass
I wouldn’t spend too much time on this piece. It’s handmade, but an inexpensive production piece made en masse using inexpensive crushed chip inlay. Back in the day, a bracelet like that one would job for less than $10 if base metal, and around $10-12 if sterling. If it’s worth anything now, it would be more or less the scrap value of the silver (if any).
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Thanks for the info, I ended up selling it. I’m relieved to know that it probably wasn’t gold because I sold it for cheap. I don’t like selling my jewelry, I tend to hoard lol
but this one was driving me nuts. 
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Okay, don’t think I crazy but a simple test for sterling silver of better is the taste test. Pop it in your mouth. Pure silver to .925 doesn’t have a taste. that’s why they can use it for fillings in teeth. lower grades of silver will have a copper penny taste. Even if you have a piece that is plated to a normal thickness the copper passes through the plate at the ionic level. Remember Sterling can be made with other metals, the only thing that makes it sterling is the .925 amount of pure silver. In my shop I have a bunch of sterling rings I bought on ebay. they test out as sterling but turn gold at the first chance they get. I have decided to stop cleaning them and embrace the gold tone! Kyle
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Since we are talking metal weirdness here…I’ll just add the fact that white gold has a tendency to tarnish that slightly off yellow but mostly silvery white gold color that screws with your eyes making you think maybe its brass…the only way to know for sure is to test it unfortunately
~Koliopee
I’ve always wondered if the brassy color comes from copper mixed in with the silver. Since the silver is .925, could the remaining metal be copper giving it that brassy glow??? I have a lot of pieces marked sterling that are older and appear lightly brassy in color despite being marked. Just curious about that.
Yes and no…lol So yes the copper (and amounts of other lesser components elements) content does play with the color of a true alloy of whatever grade silver. With silver there are some main categories: 999 Fine(no additions and doesnt typically tarnish but if it does you can just wipe it off and its softer than sterling), .925 Sterling(92.5%.999 plus 7.5%copper)
and last Argentium Silver which doesnt tarnish and has different working properties than fine or sterling because the main additive ingredient in the alloy besides Fine silver .999 is Germanium which prevents it from tarnishing! Gold tones/alloys are the same. On the other hand though dont be fooled by a really nice grade of plating over base metals. Like gold filled and silver filled which are thicker than plating and they wear off at different rates giving things uneven wear and uneven tones. The proper way to test for these in general is slightly destructive with a scratch plate and acids specific to metal alloys and grades. Different alloys scratch different colors and or react differently with their comparable acids. Then you have the different surface plate treatments on older jewelry like Rhodium plating. This last one is visually different right off the bat to the trained eye and you can couple that with the design elements of the piece such as type of stone/rhinestone/paste stone/marcasite/cut steel/plastics/glass/crystal/etc… Rhodium is used on pot metal bases mostly…think vintage jewelry like shoe clips/fur clips and silver bases in finer vintage jewelry… Its even used in some more modern design but rarely. So with gold, the color is dependent on the alloy…think rose gold=more copper or Black Hills gold which is a bunch of components made with varied gold alloys. Then finally you also have to wonder if what you have is Nickle/Nickle Silver. Nickle silver is not silver at all but is a high grade Nickle used in jewelry. There are a lot of clues to sleuth out your material before you would end up doing a scratch test that can damage a piece…such as weight, style, tarnishing and color or pattern of tarnish, researching maker material choices specific to their work, Hallmarking, color…etc… This is definitely not an exhaustive explanation but it will give you a lot of angles to look into to start building your eye for the materials your pieces are made of. Hope this helps clarify some of the questions!
~Koliopee
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