Hidden Information on Native American Old Pawn Jewelry | with Dr. Mark Sublette

So one of the things I've learned over 30 years of looking at material is that you have to look at the whole piece if you want to figure out the story. And this is a great example of this. I can tell you from this bracelet that somebody in Missouri owned it at one time. Now you go, well, how'd you do that? Magic? Kind of, actually. So let's just look at the bracelet itself. So on the face value, I look at it, it looks like it's from like a 1930s, 20s, kind of a Fred Harvey piece. You can see the whirling logs that are on the side. We know that once Poland gets invaded in the late 38, no more will we see these type of design elements. These were originally, these whirling logs were a good luck symbol and they were something that the traders and the Indians would want to do. This in case would be a Navajo bracelet from that time So it all looks 30s, right? But they still make things that are in the 80s, 90s, even later that might be a remake. So we want to know, is this really a 30s piece? Well, here's the answer to that and why I know it's from Missouri. So if I look on the back here, you'll actually see a number and that's a social security number starting with 500, which you can look up is that's from Missouri. So there's the answer. So why would there be a social security number on a bracelet from the 1930s? Well, you have to think back and say the 60s timeframe or even 50s when this particular bracelet was bought by the owner, the way that they wanted to try to identify it if it got stolen is they would put their social security number on it. Clearly we wouldn't do that now because everything's changed digitally, right? And now that's a critical piece of information. But back in the 60s, 70s, this was not uncommon. You put the social security number on it. If it got stolen, you go, no, that's mine, my social security number. So when you see things like that, you want to put the whole story together. Yes, the whirling logs are important. Yes, the way it looks is important that it probably is a Fred Harvey bracelet from that timeframe. But for me, it just gets solidified when I flip it over in the back and go, it's a social security number. It's probably not a reproduction. It's the real genuine thing.