What the heck are these, I thought, when I saw snatches of brown and cream items in a plastic Ziploc bag on the auction table. The bag was cloudy so it was hard to tell exactly what I was looking at.
When I zoomed in, I saw that it was a bag of turtle shells – without the turtles. I was about to open it for an even closer look but thought better of it. I wasn’t sure what it would smell like or what unhealthy fumes would escape from it. Water had condensed inside the bag apparently from the moisture in the shells.
These were among the most unusual items I’d ever seen at auction, and I wondered who’d buy, disconnect, collect or sell turtle shells. The shells were small in diameter. The designs on several indicated that they may have been removed from box turtles – whose shell, also called a carapace, looks like a box – or baby hawksbill sea turtles.
I also wondered what anyone would do with the shells, so I went searching. I found a little trivia: Turtles are the only animals that have a shell, which is made up of 59 to 61 bones covered by plates called scutes. These scutes are made of the same keratin as our fingernails, and turtles can experience pain through them. The shells are permanently attached to the turtle’s spine and rib cage.
Sea turtle shells are used to make jewelry and leather goods, and for medicinal purposes, especially in traditional Chinese medicine. Hawksbill turtles are especially alluring for sellers in many nations because of the color combination of gold and brown in the shells, which are used to make tortoise-shell items. Hawksbill, however, are an endangered species.
I still wasn’t sure how anyone would use the smaller shells from the auction. For the larger ones, however, some folks decorate with real or fake ones.
