Turquoise & Coral Chip Inlay Jewelry This Week

by Brigid McAlpin March 16, 2025

This week's blog will be a little on the shorter side as there is much to do with Mother's estate sale taking place next weekend. I have been spending as much time as possible at the apartment pricing and staging the hard goods. They are about 95% priced. Melinda came back on Saturday afternoon for about 5 hours and she staged the kitchen and we were able to get the clutter off the floor. I priced tons of kitchen items and was able to start on the soft goods. While pricing I found some items which are more suited to sell online as opposed to the apartment estate sale. Next Monday I will take those items away, along with empty boxes and bins, and some small items I found I can use. This will help clear up space. Because Sundays are jewelry purge days and Mondays/Tuesdays are very busy with estate sale tasks I probably will not be able to spend any more real time there until Wednesday, the day before the sale. Rachel is coming in Monday evening so she will need to help wrap things up! I also need to price and photograph Mother's jewelry which will take some time but I can do that at home. Praying that it goes well as I will only have a week to remove unsold items as the lease expires on March 30.

I decided to feature turquoise and coral chip inlay jewelry in this week's purge. Most of the chip inlay pieces came out of the 1970s and the peyote bird was a popular motif. Unfortunately the only piece that has sold so far is the butterfly ring, the other pieces are still available. They are really cool pieces and look especially good on people with tattoos. Almost all of the cuff bracelets are artist signed - Navajo silversmiths Delvin Nelson, Hyson Craig and William Singer are represented. There is also a Gilbert Ortega shop piece, he owns several Native American jewelry and home decor stores in the area including two close to us in Old Town Scottsdale. He is a polarizing figure though, some folks prefer not to patronize his stores. Mother and I visited the large store several times, the jewelry collection is so impressive but prices are up there.

I had two non-paying customers from last week's purge - the eyeglass holder and the watch band. If anyone needs a unique eyeglass holder, let me know! Luckily the watch band was claimed (and immediately paid for) by another customer later in the week. It does not happen frequently but I do not understand why people claim an item, provide the email address and then ghost the seller. Common courtesy would be to send a 30-second message saying "I changed my mind and will not take this item after all." I think people who do not pay should be kicked out of the Facebook group.

Speaking of getting kicked out of Facebook groups, with about half of the groups I post to the postings need to be approved by the group administrator before they are released. I posted to one group called Crazy Turquoise Sales and had a note on my group list saying they do not always approve posts. Well this administrator did not approve my post until a week later, when I was in the middle of posting the current week's jewelry to my list of groups. Then she had the nerve to demand I add the pricing details immediately! I said well it took you a week to approve this post and now I am working on the current week. I will get to it later this evening. It crossed my mind that she would just kick me out of the group and sure enough, she did. I remember her being difficult in the past before she had her own group, giving lowball offers on the jewelry I was selling because she was a reseller. No loss there.

I did sell five items online in spite of not having time to post any new pieces. I was thrilled to sell this one of a kind bolo and earrings set on Poshmark. I had it made for myself a couple of years ago and while it is very beautiful, I found that bolos are just not for me. The bolo slide is a vintage Navajo-made pin which was enhanced with new cording and tip dangles which match the earrings. I am really glad that it found a new home. I also sold a beautiful turquoise cuff bracelet, inlay watch tips and a malachite necklace on Etsy, and a pair of turquoise earrings on eBay.

When we first came to Scottsdale, I tried doing package pickup with USPS but found that they would not always do the pickups. Because I am selling higher value jewelry, I have decided to drop off the packages myself. I can scan them at the kiosk and put them in the parcel drop box. Scottsdale's main post office is right on the way to the senior center where we do our workouts and then sometimes on the way home Kuochun would like to stop at Fry's grocery store. He has had some interesting (but healthy!) eating habits lately. He eats an entire plain avocado every morning along with a croissant or muffin for breakfast. He used to skip breakfast so this is a big improvement. Recently Kuochun has decided to eat whole sweet potatoes, also plain. He ate two of them for dinner Sunday night and told me he sometimes eats three! He steams them in the rice cooker. As a result, he needs to stop by the grocery store and replenish supplies a couple of times a week. This loop is very efficient for us!

This is not my photo but we have had four of these Walgreens soda fountain glasses in our family for a very long time. They were my grandpa's, he actually knew the person who invented the bendable straw in 1937 and they came from that era. I have had them in my possession for over 30 years until Rachel got a glimpse of them on her last visit and I reluctantly agreed to give her two. As of late Kuochun has been interested in using them to make root beer floats. On one of our trips to Fry's we decided to pick up the ingredients. It is difficult to find real ice cream at the grocery store anymore but I picked up Tillamook old fashioned vanilla. I wanted Sprecher's root beer but Fry's only had IBC. Kuochun thought it was fine but I did not care for it. Then I looked at the ingredients and found it has natural and artificial flavors. I really try to avoid both so IBC will be a no-go in the future. I did a Google search and found that Sprecher's has the same bad ingredients. So much for being a wholesome product from Wisconsin! I did some research and found Zia Root Beer which is made in New Mexico and 100% clean. Their website says it is available at the very Fry's we go to so I will try and find it next time.

Kuochun has been wanting to go to the Old Town Scottsdale Farmer's Market for a while and we had not been there yet this season so we took some time out to pop over there on Saturday morning. It is a beautiful market but is not as large as the Uptown Phoenix market because it is strictly limited to food or farmed items. We were not in need of a whole lot but Kuochun was able to stock up on some favorite foods. There is a booth where they make gigantic skillets of paella in three different flavors - seafood, chicken and sausage and a new one to us, the breakfast paella. Kuochun chose seafood and I selected breakfast. I was surprised to find two over hard eggs on top of the paella and it was plenty to eat for lunch on both Saturday and Sunday. Kuochun felt his rice was undercooked so he will be hesitant to try it again. He also went with gumbo and jambalaya from another booth but he has not tried them yet. I was happy to see Arizona Bread Company had the apricot walnut bread. I normally get it from Baker Thirteen along with cookies and scones but she was not present that day. The bread seems like it is made in the same place for both vendors. They have all the best bread at this farmer's market, namely Noble Bread and Proof Bread. We were there early so Noble Bread was not crowded yet but they do not slice their bread which is a dealbreaker for me. Proof always has a super long line so I have not navigated it yet. We decided to try something different and got some cinnamon rolls. I chose a large one with caramel and pecan and Kuochun selected three mini cinnamon rolls. This market always gives me sticker shock and this was no exception. The large cinnamon roll was $8.25. I thought it was good but not $8.25 good. I am happy to visit a time or two each season because it is so close to home but Uptown Phoenix is my favorite.

Next week will be a very busy one with five estate sales (including Mother's) but I am going to see if I can post ten new pieces online to keep the stores fresh.

See you next time!