How to Spot Fake Native American Jewelry

The fauxthentic Native American jewelry market is large, profitable, and difficult to navigate from a thumbnail on a marketplace listing. This guide covers the six tests that, taken together, separate authentic Native American jewelry from imports, imitations, and outright forgeries.

The short version: real Native American jewelry is made by a tribally-enrolled artist, in sterling silver, with genuine stone, carrying a verifiable hallmark, and accompanied by documentation. Anything missing one or more of those is suspect. Anything missing three or more is almost certainly fake.

Test 1 — Inspect the hallmark

The hallmark is the artist’s signature in metal. It is small, stamped (not engraved), and located somewhere unobtrusive: the inside of a cuff, the back of a pendant, the inside band of a ring.

Real hallmarks:

• Are slightly uneven across pieces by the same artist (hand-stamped variance).
• Are accompanied by a sterling stamp (.925 or Sterling).
• Are stamped directly into the body of the piece, not on a separate soldered-on tag.

Fake hallmarks:

• Are laser-perfect across multiple pieces (same hallmark, no variance).
• Lack a sterling stamp.
• Sit on a small separately-attached tag soldered to the piece.
• Are a known artist’s mark on a piece that doesn’t match that artist’s style or era.

If the seller cannot send a high-resolution close-up of the hallmark on request, treat the piece as suspect.

Test 2 — Verify tribal enrollment

Under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, only enrolled members of federally- or state-recognized tribes can legally market their work as Native American. Ask the seller:

1. What is the artist’s name?
2. What is the artist’s tribe?
3. Is the artist tribally enrolled?
4. Will the seller provide a Certificate of Authenticity that names the artist and tribe?

A seller who hedges, deflects, or claims this information is “proprietary” is signaling that the artist is not enrolled or the seller has not done the verification. Walk away.

LomaSiiva’s position: we publish the artist’s tribe on every catalog listing, retain the artist’s tribal enrollment documentation in our verification archive, and reference it on every Certificate of Authenticity.

Test 3 — Check the silver mark

Authentic Native American silver is sterling: 92.5% silver, alloyed with copper. It carries a stamp:

• “.925” (the international sterling standard)
• “Sterling” (the U.S. word stamp)
• “925” without the period (acceptable but less common)

Red flags:

• No mark at all. Plated silver, nickel, or low-grade alloy. Plating wears off; nickel triggers skin reactions.
• “Native silver” or “German silver”. These are marketing names for nickel-copper-zinc alloys with no actual silver content.
• “Tibet silver”. Common on imports; almost never contains silver.
• “Silver-tone” or “silver-color”. Marketing copy that quietly admits the piece isn’t silver.

A magnet test gives a rough check: silver is non-magnetic. If a magnet sticks, the piece contains nickel or steel and is not sterling.

Test 4 — Examine the stone

Genuine turquoise (and the other natural stones used in Southwest jewelry — coral, spiny oyster, jet, lapis) has natural variation. Imitations don’t.

Turquoise specifically:

• Natural turquoise has visible matrix — lines of host rock in the stone — that varies across the cabochon. The matrix is the geological signature.
• Stabilized turquoise is real turquoise that has been infused with resin to prevent cracking. Common, acceptable in mid-priced pieces, should be disclosed.
• Reconstituted turquoise is ground turquoise dust mixed with resin and pressed. Real material, but processed. Should be disclosed and priced accordingly.
• Block turquoise is plastic. It is uniform in color, has no real matrix (or has a fake painted matrix), and is found in many imports.
• Howlite or magnesite dyed blue is sold as turquoise on imported jewelry. Tells: too-uniform color, dye visible at the edges, color streaks visible under magnification.

If the stone has a perfect blue with a clean repeating matrix pattern, it is almost certainly block. Real turquoise is irregular. The irregularity is the value.

Test 5 — Look at the back

Handmade pieces show construction. Mass-produced pieces don’t.

What to look for on the back of a piece:

• Hand-cut bezels. Slightly irregular bezel edges where the silversmith cut and shaped each one. Machine-pressed bezels are uniform.
• Visible solder joints. Small areas where pieces are joined. On hand-built work, the solder is visible if you look closely.
• File marks. Fine parallel scratches from finishing files, particularly on the back of cuffs and pendants.
• Slight tool variance. If the piece has stamped designs (Navajo silver in particular), the stamps will vary in depth and angle — hand-struck.

Mass-produced imports look molded or pressed: smooth backs, no file marks, perfect symmetry, perfect uniformity.

Test 6 — Demand provenance

An authentic seller provides a Certificate of Authenticity that names the artist, the artist’s tribe, the date of acquisition, and the verification process. The COA is the legal record protecting the buyer under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act.

If the seller offers no COA, or offers a COA that says only “Native American style” or “Southwest authentic” without naming the artist and tribe, the piece is unverified and the seller’s “authentic” claim is marketing language without legal weight.

LomaSiiva attaches a Certificate of Authenticity to every piece we sell. The COA references the artist’s LomaSiiva Artist ID, the piece’s LomaSiiva Piece ID, and the verification archive entry that documents the artist’s tribal enrollment.

The combined test

No single one of these six tests is sufficient on its own — a forger can fake a hallmark, a fake stone may pass a quick visual check, and a Certificate of Authenticity is only as good as the verification behind it. But the six tests together are unforgeable, because passing all six requires the artist to actually be a tribally-enrolled silversmith, the materials to actually be sterling and natural stone, and the documentation to actually trace back to a real artist and tribe.

If a piece passes one or two tests but fails the others, walk away. If it passes all six, the piece is authentic and worth the asking price.

Where LomaSiiva fits

Every piece in the LomaSiiva catalog passes all six tests by design. Tribal enrollment is verified before the artist is added. Hallmarks are registered. Stones are tested. Construction is examined. The Certificate of Authenticity is generated from a documented archive.

The point of this guide is not to convince you to buy from LomaSiiva. It is to help you ask the right questions wherever you buy. The market has more fakes than originals, and a few minutes of verification work saves the buyer from years of regret.

Related

• Authenticity hub
• Why tribal enrollment matters
• Hallmarks guide by tribe
• The Indian Arts and Crafts Act
• LomaSiiva’s verification process

Updated 2026. LomaSiiva — The Only Authentic.