I am reviewing a collection I inherited from my grandparents. My grandmother was of Mescalara Apache descent and my grandfather was mayor of Tucumcari for decades. Together they owned and operated the famous TeePee Curios on RT 66 from sometime in the late 50s until about 1980 from what i can gather. I will be looking to find out what I can about the pieces in this collection as well as selling some to help pay for my father’s cancer treatments. Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge with me. God bless!
I don’t believe that the first piece is necessarily Native American, can’t tell from the second picture the quality of the metal or the stones, a picture of the entire ring would be helpful on the third piece, and the last one is quite lovely, but I can’t tell if that hallmark is an H? Single letter hallmarks can be very hard to figure out.
Sorry if that’s not a very detailed response, but I don’t really have time to dig further right at the moment. Maybe you will get some more input.
Thank yall. This was one of her favorites, theres no mark but she wrote 1956 with a sharpie on the back, she was very meticulous so i am confident the date is accurate. Anything you could share as far as the stones or the design and value would be appreciated!
Really nice stuff! I love your first necklace the most. The other one is super lovely too. nice Fred Harvey cuff with whirling logs and the Dendrite cuff is great. All keepers!!
Although the necklace has some age to it, I think it is unlikely that it was made in the 50’s. The leaf work and filigree style didn’t really come around until maybe mid to late 60s, and really came into its own in the early 70s. The stones look like they’ve been oil treated at some point, and show characteristic lightening as the oil has aged and dried out over time. From the color it’s likely from Arizona, and probably Kingman.
The long and the short is that this a fairly common style from the late 60’s through the 70s. Lots and lots still in circulation. I typically see pieces like this turn up at gun shows and auction sites with markups far beyond their value, and all kinds of stories attached to them but no real provenance.
Ballpark estimate for realistic fair market value is about $280 - $360, maybe as high as $400.
Thank you sir, it makes me wonder why she wrote that on there, trying to think what else it could mean besides a date, this wasnt in the store’s inventory and it certainly wasnt a price from the 70’s-80’s , although disappointing, i dont believe this one will be sold as i can still remember her wearing it. But thanks for keeping things honest. Any insights on this piece?
You’re welcome. To me the Yei inlay necklace looks like it was made from imported ready made cabs from the Philippines. The settings look like they could be Philippine as well. The beads look like they might be handmade, so for me this one is a bit of a head scratcher.
I know they drove from Tucumcari to the various Nations and trading posts and purchased their inventory in person, (they even Pulled their airstream and drove to Alaska!) so its very possible they could have purchased imported products if they were being sold by the dealers and artisans as NA, it sounds like that was a common practice during that time period? So the artists would import the inlay and assemble/ mark the finished item? Kind of like a Toyota made in Texas? As you can see here this bracelet bears the same mark.
My old trading company bosses in the early 70s used to bring in inlaid mother of pearl cabs from the Philippines by the 5 gallon bucket load and turn them over to a shop full of silversmiths (I was one of them) who worked in the back of the trading company in Gallup. So, yes. That’s exactly how it worked.
To answer your other question, Delhi no. Cebu Philippines, possibly - at least in part. There were no rules back then. Everybody was involved in jewelry making, and everything sold so fast people seldom asked too many questions. Stickers mean absolutely nothing without a documented chain of custody. If you can track down the silversmith behind the hallmark you’ve got some history and provenance.
To provide a frame of reference, the marked retail price is $285. Assuming a typical path to market at that time a wholesaler would have paid a jobber price of ~ $95 from the workshop, and the wholesale price to a retailer would have been $142.50 from the wholesaler (a 50% markup from jobber cost). From there the retailer would typically mark it up 100% to $285.
An important consideration regarding probable origin is that if this were completely handmade in the US, even in the 70s, the cost from a maker would have been close to double the jobber price, and retail at that time would be closer to five or six hundred.
I believe you just posted a lot of these things in another thread also. I still think you need to get an appraiser if you’re looking to find out values on all of these.
