AMBER - Forgeries & Imitations

A very common form of counterfeiting is where the seller cheats with whether it is copal or amber and thereby sells a piece for far more than the real value. In such fraud, it is most often copal that is sold under the name amber.

First, it must be said that this is a much debated area! Copal is young amber (with a scientific language called subfossil resin). When can something be called copal and when is it amber? Experts have estimated the copal to be between ~30 years and 1.6 million years (Poinar(1999),p.151), this is based on the different geological locations, chemical and physical properties and its inclusions.

Collectors and commercial dealers often sell copal with an age of several million years to well over ten million years. David Grimaldi believed claims of 2 million year old copal in Africa and South America to be suspect. "The oldest copal deposit, from Mizunami, Japan, is approximately 33,000 years old" (Amber: Window to the Past by David A. Grimaldi 1996, p.16).

He stated copal deposits from Colombia "are sold to amateur collectors as 'Pliocene amber' (about two million years old), even though carbon-14 dating indicates it is only several hundred years old, like all the other Hymenaea copal deposits" (Amber: Window to the Past by David A. Grimaldi 1996, p.16)

Identify Copal: Take a few drops of acetone (fingernail polish remover) or alcohol on the piece; amber will not/slovly be affected by the solvent, but copal's surface will become sticky. In the vicinity of a flame will copal melt, while amber will merely soften soft and become black.

That a piece is sold as a different type may be due to the seller's ignorance, but the seller often knows what has been bought, and therefore it is often due to direct indifference and exploitation of the customer's lack of knowledge about amber. You will be able to find such counterfeits at reputable auction houses, museum shops and small stone and fossil shops. To spot the scammer, remember to examine the characteristics (color, clarity, surface texture, etc.) that are for the type that the seller claims it is. Use evt. a search on the web and find pictures for comparison. It can also be a good idea to ask experts for advice if you are in doubt about the origin or value of a piece.

Click on the image and enlarge it
- the picture shows an auction on ebay where Madagascar copal is sold as burmese amber

This is often the most difficult to determine

The counterfeits, which may be the most difficult to detect, consist primarily of amber combined with a small amount of another material that chemically has similarities to amber. This could be polyester or epoxy. These fakes are most often made to make very convincing fakes of rare amber inclusions.

In practice, it is a piece of polished amber that someone has either sanded a hole in the surface or cut into two pieces and sanded cavities in between. After this, the inclusion has been placed in the hollow - it could be, for example, a small snail, flower, hair, tick, lice or a feather. The cavity is subsequently filled with polyester or epoxy and the piece is polished so that the transition between the two materials disappears. It should be emphasized that good counterfeits are rare and even less commonly seen in the trade as they are difficult to manufacture so they are convincing to an expert. The good specimens of these forgeries are often made with such fine craftsmanship that they have become real collectibles. Among other things, this type of forgery can be spotted based on how the enclosure is preserved and placed in the piece, and by using a UV lamp, the transition between the two materials can most often be revealed.

The picture shows close-ups of a piece of real Baltic amber, where the upper part of the piece has been sanded away and replaced with plastic. In addition, a wasp is molded into the top layer of plastic. Click on the image to enlarge it

The absolute most common. These types of counterfeits are often poorly made and relatively easy to verify.

Some counterfeits are mass-produced with the intention of cheating. It is easy to make a product reminiscent of amber, as amber chemically has many similarities with plastic. In 1868, celluloid was invented, which became the starting shot on the wave of mass-produced amber imitations. Around the year 1900, casein and bakelite were invented and after World War II, people began to use various plastic products such as polyester and epoxy. Over time, the methods of producing imitations have become more sophisticated, and modern imitations can be difficult to detect.

One of the newest products on the market is the polybern. It is a contraction of the words polyester and the German word for amber ‘Bernstein’. The product is a mixture of small pieces of amber drenched with polyester. It should be emphasized that the polybern contains real amber, but it is a blended product that must not be sold as natural amber. In addition to all the plastic imitations, this material is among the most common imitations of amber.

The untrained eye may have a hard time spotting whether it is amber or plastic, but here both a salt water test and a UV lamp can help. If it is true amber, it should float in a salt water solution and in UV light it should light up in blue-green tones. In addition, you can also hold a heated needle against the surface and if it smells of coniferous forest, it indicates that it is real amber, however, not all amber smells equally strongly. Use several different tests to check the authenticity, because only in combination with several tests can you get clear evidence of whether it is amber. If in doubt, contact a specialist.

It is often seen that animals and plants are molded into plastic and sold as if they were real amber with inclusions. It could, for example, be scorpions, lizards, beetles, flowers, etc. However, it is quite easy to detect these fakes. First of all, the above test can be performed to check if it is amber or a plastic material. In addition, the embedded animals or plants will most often deviate from inclusions in amber in that they have colors or bear the mark of being arranged.

Picture: a piece of Polybern, the picture is made by Egon Gade