My grandmother loved everything Native American and southwestern US and collected silver and turquoise jewelry, sand paintings, kachinas, bronze sculptures and more. She had a timeshare in Scottsdale where she spent time and bought all her collection. She has sadly passed and I’ve inherited way too much jewelry, in addition to owning my own. I have this squash blossom piece which is heavy but I don’t see any identifying marks of silver or an artist on it. Is this something authentic? What is the value of something like this? Estate taxes are no fun especially during Covid. Thanks for any help.
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Welcome to Turquoise People community, we are very sorry for your loss but it sounds like your grandmother had some amazing taste! Very nice squash. It definitely has some age and appears to be handmade and authentic because of the hand made bench beads, hand cut blossoms and foxtail chain its strung on. The price for this one is hard because of copper corrosion(sterling is 92.5%fine silver and the rest is typically copper) I would suggest to have it tested to see if it is sterling otherwise it could be a lower silver allow which would effect its worth. I would also make sure they test the bench beads, squash pieces and the naja separately because they appear that they may be differing alloys of perhaps sterling for the main peices and 75% or more for the beads. The turquoise is nice which helps it value in a good way. The fact that its unsigned reduces its value but I bet you can still pay a bill with it! I feel you’ve come to the right place. I would probably just wait for the others to chime in on the value. Hope this helps. We would love to see other pieces she has left to you. We love to admire and use it as a learning tool about the people who owned them and the artisans which made the pieces. Thank you for sharing and welcome!
~Koliopee
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Welcome! I concur with Koliopee on all counts!
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Thank you so much for your detailed and thoughtful response. I would love to upload more photos of her items. Some do have initials or signatures. I know one is Frank Yellowhorse I believe. Would it be best to post in this thread, or create a new one?
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It was my pleasure, If you are wanting more info on any pieces then this is the thread but make a new post for those. If you just want show us and tell us what its all about then use show and tell…otherwise just follow the themes for all the various subjects that you want to post about. We cant wait!
~Koliopee
Hi! I want to see the Frank Yellowhorse piece! Is it inlay?
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Beautiful necklace. The age helps this one, would imagine seeing something like this around $1200.