FREE: Polished stone "bear claw" necklace 60s-70s

My condolences about your mom's passing Kathleen78--I know that can be tough! But wow--seems like you just opened up a time capsule from the 1970's! I remember those aluminium trays--weren't they used for t.v. dinners? lol :-)

WOW!!! which ones are they?! great info! plus you made my 500th fan! TY!

W too!

I bought a whole bunch of them from her when we went to Germany in 1975. We spent 6 weeks there, from November through after New Year's, 76. (A long plane ride with flight changes and with 2 kids in diapers is pretty interesting, lol.) My ex (who still happens to be my best buddy on earth, even though we've been divorced for well over 20 years) had a friend who was a jeweler who was very interested in selling them in his shop in Dusseldorf. So we bought them and packed them in our suitcases and took them with us. Heck, when I think about it, I don't even know if it was legal to take that many NA necklaces out of the country without paying something; I know you can't bring in things from other countries, but I don't know if it works the other way around. I didn't think about it at the time.

Well, the problem was, when we got to Germany to stay with my ex's relatives for the holidays, the jeweler friend had a heart attack and was in the hospital and then went to some place my ex called "Coor" or some such thing. He wasn't recovered by the time we left. He was still interested months later, but by then, well, we just didn't have the money to take another trip, and somehow, my mother wound up storing all of them for us. Frankly, we forgot about them for decades. When Mom died in mid-2011, I had to load all her stuff into our garage; gosh, it's packed solid. I'm just slowly going through things; I just get too dang tired to do much nowadays. Well, I opened a box and there they were, just like we packed them back in 76 when we gave them to her to store. One thing about that woman; she never threw away anything. Once she got hold of it, it disappeared into the black hole of storage and never saw the light of day again, lol. I even had to throw away 100 aluminum tv trays from the 50s, you know, the kind with the three triangle shaped compartments. (I'm beginning to wonder if I should have listed them here, lol. She saved EVERYTHING!)

Sorry for the long-winded explanation; I tend to ramble. :)

And don't worry about being too chatty here on listia--I didn't get the 2,000 comments badge for nothing! lol they probably will have to add new badges just for me! :-)

Well, that' makes me feel better, buster. Yeah, those trays were for tv dinners. They came out with Swansons when I was kid. They usually had 2 pieces of chicken in the big triangle, and then mashed potatoes in one of the top triangles and corn in the other (or sometimes peas.) Or you could get the meat loaf one, if you wanted. That was about all they had in tv dinners at the time, but I was little then so I'm not sure if there were others. That's all we ever got, anyway. Many years later, they came out with another little portion, where they had some type of apple dessert. And then of course, later, they came out with all those fancy ones that they have nowadays. TV dinners have come a long way since then, lol. They don't even have metal trays anymore, since everyone wants to microwave.

Love the green turquoise too Kathleen78! :-) Watching

Hey Kathleen! lol you took all those ncklaces to Germany? UM! my Hippie boyfriend snuck in some Kahlua from Mexico! ooooooh! :-)

those are Heishi beads hon!

Thank you for letting me know. I never got into the jewelry like my mother did. The only Native American jewelry I ever bought for myself were necklaces from Nellie Begay, because she was a friend of my mother's and I met her socially once or twice. I have two of her pieces up, but as far as the other jewelry goes, I know very little. And now I know more, thanks to you. :)

Nellie made the two auctions I have up. The big sunburst necklaces, one is crimson red and the other I call "sunset" orange. Nellie Begay used to make necklaces for a living. She lived on a little ranch just outside of Window Rock, in Navajo country. A full-blooded Navajo, she used to come down to Flagstaff (and sometimes Phoenix) to sell her wares to set her family up for the winter. They'd stock up on everything from the money she made selling these things. (At least that's what my mother told me.)