Silver and Gold

Silver and gold are both precious metals with many uses outside of the jewelry industry, and both are publicly traded commodities which can fluctuate wildly in price.  These price fluctuations can make or break the fortunes of investors, as well as having a major effect on the collecting passions of people in the American Indian jewelry world.  What has been the recent effect of some of the market activity?  Let's take a look at both cases, starting with silver.

At the time of this writing, silver was trading at 80 cents per gram, or $34.16 per dwt.  That is just off the 5-year high of $34.30 per dwt, which was achieved on Friday, March 28, 2025.  The 5-year low was $12.28 per dwt on March 19, 2020.  How does that affect the price of American Indian jewelry?  The simple answer in terms of historic and vintage pieces is very little, because the value of the silver in these pieces is quite a bit less than the market value of the piece.  As an example, let's look at this bracelet by Johnny Mike Begay, brother of Kenneth Begay and an important silversmith in his own right:

A beautiful piece of art, no doubt.  The total weight is 46 grams, which means at current market price, there is $36.80 worth of silver in this bracelet.  (The weight of the turquoise is under a gram.)  If silver doubled in price, there would still be only $73.60 worth of silver in the bracelet.  Johnny Mike Begay bracelets of this quality have a current market value of far more than that, so there is no danger of anyone with any knowledge of the marketplace melting this down.  Nor is there a chance of the price of silver going up enough to materially impact the market value of this intact bracelet--silver value in antique and vintage pieces is a very small component in determining the market value of any high-quality piece.

Where the cost of silver shows up as a factor is in newer and less artistically important pieces, generally with a price under $300.  There, without the history and artistic importance of a piece like the bracelet above, fluctuations in the price of silver can definitely impact a piece's market value, to the point where some pieces of lower worth are actually most valuable as scrap.

Gold was not in general use in American Indian jewelry before the mid-1960s, but many very expensive contemporary pieces are either partly or all gold, either 14k or 18k.  The current price of gold as I sit typing this is $88.38 per gram, or $3,134.70 per dwt.  That is for pure gold--14k and 18k would be less, but still quite a bit more expensive than silver.  At those price levels, a bracelet like the one above, if it was made of 14k gold at $56.15 per gram, would contain nearly $2,600 worth of gold.  At those levels, only the most high-level jewelers can afford to make such a piece, even if, as is often the case, they are receiving financial backing.  

With gold being as expensive as it is currently, it is vitally important for collectors to know whether a finished piece is 14k or 18k, because 18k is currently worth nearly 30% more than 14k.

The lesson to learn?  When someone says how much the price of gold has impacted the American Indian jewelry market, they are probably right.  When they say the same about the price of silver, it only holds true at a lower dollar level.