Beware of Fake Amber

In amber stores one may find a great variety of amber products of any kind. However, one must keep in mind that there are a lot of fake amber gemstones. To make sure that the piece you have bought is actually made out of natural, amber one must remember several vital rules.

Cheap resins can often be used as substitutes for amber. One may tell the difference by its smell and softness: cheap resins do not have such a strong smell as natural amber does and are softer, so they can easily be scratched. One may also use a 10x magnifying glass to distinguish an artificial stone from natural amber: there are wavy lines on a fake stone due to its artificial origin.

How to Distinguish Natural Amber from its Cheap Substitutes

It is far more difficult to distinguish natural amber from its fake copy made out of copan — a solid resin that looks quite similar to amber, but has a different origin that has yet been quite little explored. It costs much less than amber, and due to this fact, dishonest sellers speculate a lot on the gemstone market. They present to the customers pieces out of copan as the ones out of amber.

Aside from the fake copies described above, one may also find artificial amber made out of glass. To recognize such a fake, one may simply use a copper needle to scratch it. A slightly visible mark will remain on a piece made out of natural amber, while nothing will happen to the stone out of glass. However, in order to let the product keep its nice look, one may use other ways of distinguishing real amber from its fake copies. For example, one can take 300 g of water and 50 g of salt and make a brine to put the stones in. Amber samples will float, while the glass ones will immediately drown.

In addition to the glass substitutes for natural amber, one may also find the plastic ones. On order to distinguish an amber gemstone from its plastic copy, one must simply learn that plastic is denser than amber. One can take some sharp object and carefully break off a piece from amber gemstone. Better to do it in a place that is not easily visible, for example, near the hole in the bead. Natural amber will crumble, while its cheaper plastic copies will break apart in chunks and chips.