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Original Message:   Re: By comparison:
Many many thanks FrederickII! MUCH to learn! This will be a longer answer, please apologize: I am German, my husband is a very knowledgeable collector of medieval glasses (like drinking glasses etc), and he in general knows much about this kind of glass (but he knows nothing about beads, and I know a little bit, but especially that time nothing about fakes). So he knows how different old glass can look like, depending on the area (ground in most instances), it was found. We purchased this bead in the Netherlands, on the Uetrecht huge flea-market which does take place each year Nov. From a dealer who had mainly dug items, like medieval things and prehistory (stone artifacts among them), which were genuine, we definitely could judge this. This was one of the reasons we thought the bead may be genuine too. The next reason was the yellow color. My hubby thought it is the same as on the Oinochoe (glass jar) from the 6-4 century BC, region of the black sea. Technique also is the same: a sand core, and this combed feather decoration, also similar color combo with bright blue and green and sometimes red or dark blue. We thought we knew enough about old glass in general to be "on the safe side" although we really didn't know enough about old beads! But colors look different in pictures, and we just checked some pictures we have of such jars, most often the yellow is darker, warmer.

I disagree to your judgement that the surface of the bead is eaqually etched. Sorry, my pics may be not the best. The blue-green end: the green is less "pitted" than the blue, and the colored body is almost not etched, it is smooth, with many small holes we thought were air-bubbles in the glass. We thought this bead may originate from a grave, which also would explain the unusual large size. All other reasons you mention, especially the shape, size, also the red color, we agree. With respect to cracks, we thought these are caused by stress when cooling down the glass. We paid Euro 600, which was quite some money for us that time, and it was a risky thing!

I post 3 pictures of GENUINE old glass beads from digs: they all originate from a Frankish - Merovingian grave yard which was located near my hubby's hometown. It was partly destroyed by power shovel in the late 1960s. Burial objects and human bone lay in the open, and my hubby just collected the beads. The large one is a Roman glass bead (3,3 x 2,4 cm) which was given to the Frankish person for his last journey, the other three are Frankish, the two large ones look like new beads (length 1,0 and 1,1 cm). What would you think without this story? If you would see them on ebay, would you buy?

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