Dig It - 6/21/26

Recollections, Ep. 4: Deep Into The Grind

On January 6th, 1987, I moved to Santa Fe to start work at Morning Star Gallery. Now the gallery was not that interested in early Navajo silver. They had some, mostly for the wives of “big spenders," and I have to say that back then 90% of the jewelry sales went to women. In the late 80s, jewelry with stones like this one were the most popular pieces. Bracelets made in the 1920s to the 1940s were what was selling. There were certainly a few connoisseurs looking for late 19th-century material. As I recall, I could buy good bracelets for around $250 to $350 and sell them for $500 to $750. 

By the 1990s, more people were looking for turn-of-the-century pieces, and good-to-great bracelets were starting to run around $1,500 to $2,000. At that price many women were starting to drop out of the market. I don’t know how many times I heard someone say, “I could buy gold and diamonds for that price.” There was a shift; now men were starting to wear early Native American bracelets. It was not uncommon to see a man with a Rolex on one wrist and an early bracelet on the other. There is some mysterious relationship between the prices of these two items. When the prices of Rolexes go up, so do the prices of bracelets. At that time, many Native American art dealers sported some of the greatest early Navajo bracelets. I’ve been lucky over the years to end up with a few of them. Since the 1990s, the price of early Native American silver has been on a pretty steady rise.

Hold on to your seats, Seekers! For in the next episode, I expose all! Yes, the Big Titillating Reveal! -Lonesome