Trade Beads

[undertaker]

I have collected artifacts for sometime now and have never found a trade bead or even seen a authentic one. I just purchased a small collection that has some beads that appear to be glass trade beads. Are trade beads reproduce like modern knapped points? Could anyone tell me if these are authentic, or have pics of authentic ones that I could see. I know it took awhile to find my first pottery shard but once I found one they became easier to find then arrowheads once I knew what to look for.

[fossis]

I have never found a trade bead either in 40 years of looking.

These look old,.......................Fossis

[Cannonman17]

I have found some, but very few. One all by itself in a camp, and then a string of them at an old trade site (burried in a creek bank). The are reporduced by the tens of thousands.... these that you show here do NOT appear to be reproductions... I would be willing to bet they are authentic. I would give them at least a 90%+ chance of being authentic.. very cool indeed.

[Atlantis0077]

Morning,

Those look good to me as well. Not something you run up on much here. The ones I have seen are very tiny, flat and normally colored yellow or green, but admittedly, I have seen VERY few. Nice find though.

Atlantis

[MRDUKE]

the beads you show in your pictures are called cranberry's and thy were some of the more costy beads you could buy because to get the red color thy had to use gold (don,t ask my how thy did it i don,t know.) OK now don,t hate me but over 25 years ago i used to go out to the Indian burial grounds you could find hundreds of beads right on top of the ground where the rain would wash them up , it was hard not to become an expert on beads ,ive found blue glass beads,bone beads ,cranberries, shell beads, and a few Catholic metals. i now know this was wrong. and have returned every thing that i had found back to the site s i had been (all returned over 15 years ago.)