CAN YOU REALLY TELL IF SOMETHING IS AUTHENTIC BY LOOKING AT THE PICTURE?

To be perfectly blunt, the only way to be absolutely 100% sure that a piece of jewelry is authentic is to buy from a reputable dealer (and there are a number of great ones on ebay!). There are societies like the Antique Tribal Arts Dealer Association (ATADA) that require their members hold to the highest standards. If someone has educational information in their listing, they probably want you as a buyer to be well informed, and therefore are not afraid of informed buyers. But there are things you can look for in a piece of jewelry. If you are lucky the piece will be signed by the Zuni or Navajo artist and will be readily identifiable. Get some of the books below and familiarize yourself with Zuni versus Navajo last names. If the piece is marked Begay or Yazzi, it ain't Zuni. If the piece is not marked, look for tight bezels and well-formed and smooth silverwork. Hand stamping and file work can be precise, but is not always utterly uniform, like it would be if a machine stamped it. A handmade bezel, for holding a stone, usually doesn't have perfectly triangular sharp uniform teeth. It is very hard to tell from a picture if a piece of turquoise is good, but if it looks plastic-like or the matrix looks too uniform and perfect, it may be block or faux. Many of the old Fred Harvey pieces do not have real turquoise, which does not make them any less collectible. In general Zuni people do the best inlay and the Navajo are known for their superb silverwork, but of course there are exceptions. I have seen both Zuni and Navajo turquoise cluster work, and even snake eyes row work. Also I have seen Navajo inlaid knifewing or rainbowman kachinas, which are more typically made by Zuni artists. Big heavy silverwork is usually Navajo. Also there are collaborations between Zuni and Navajo artists, C. G. Wallace brought Navajo silverwork by Roger Skeet or John Hoxie to be inlaid by Zuni artists Leekya Deyuse or Lambert Homer, and even now Zunis will be asked to do the inlay for a Navajo silverwork piece. One thing to watch for is the use of the term Old or Dead Pawn. Pawn has a specific meaning, Native people essentially borrow money against a valuable piece of jewelry, which is then held in a pawn vault as secure as any bank. Later they repay the loan and get their piece back. Sadly, sometimes they don't ever have the money to get their jewelry back, and so after a designated amount of time the pawn becomes dead, i.e. sellable to anyone. A lot of people think that if a piece they are selling looks old it must be old or dead pawn. Collectors feel that old pawn is some of the highest quality jewelry, as it was intended for use of the artist and his/her family rather than tourists, so many people mark their listings as pawn whether or not they actually did get it from a shop that deals in bona fide pawn. Personally I only mark my pieces pawn if I got them from a pawn trading post. Of course there are still plenty of high quality older pieces that are not directly from pawn shops. The best general advice I have for you is to get some of the books listed below and spend a lot of time looking at pictures! And remember even ethical sellers sometimes make mistakes.