Navajo Jewelry - Identifying the real stuff
Navajo Jewelry was frequently sold to tourists from the East. This was especially true in the 1920's & 30's when Fred Harvey was active along the Santa Fe Railroad. Once the fad wore off, these clunky old things went into the drawer, not to be seen again until the heirs are clearing out the house. As a result fabulous old pieces of Navajo jewelry are sometimes listed by clueless sellers.
On the other hand, there was a huge Indian jewelry fad in the 1970's. Those pieces have enough age to have tarnished nicely and are often described on Ebay as "Old", or "Vintage". They tend to be very lightweight compared to the really old items and the turquoise often has a lot of plastic in it. I have proven to myself that I can not reliably tell plastic turquoise from real turquoise just by looking at pictures on an Ebay auction.
