Photos

Comments

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  Joost Daalder December 31, 2011 at 1:57am

  Can you please say a bit more about "chestnut" amber, Sarah??
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  SARAH CORBETT December 31, 2011 at 1:58am

  still uploading, will describe them all shortly!
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  Joost Daalder December 31, 2011 at 2:11am

  Good - thanks!
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  Linda Pastorino December 31, 2011 at 3:54am

  these are most interesting..
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  Joost Daalder December 31, 2011 at 4:10am

  The "problem", if that is how we are to see it, is that a good resin soon looks like "real" amber, which is itself a resin, its chief unusual characteristic being that it was fossilised at a vastly earlier date than any other similar material. With the naked eye the difference between it and later resins of a natural kind, such as copal resin and NZ "kauri gum" etc is often not easy to see. If, moreover, a resin very similar to "true" amber is covered with a coating such as real amber might have, it will soon look like the real thing. This form here, for example, is in some ways superficially a passable imitation of "burmite", Burmese amber, which is a "true" amber, but orange-brown in colour in a way that the best-known form, Baltic amber, is not (but burmite is often at least in part transparent). The whole scene is actually very confusing if considered only with the naked eye. IN PRACTICE, tribal collectors will often pay good money for material which is not "real" amber so long as it looks as though it has been part of a tribal context, and for long enough.
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  Joost Daalder December 31, 2011 at 4:18am

  Amber earplugs like these were often made of burmite. Note that even when dark there is always transparancy somewhere, it seems, not the completely opaque effect of the beads above: http://www.google.com.au/imgres?q=burmite&hl=en&client=fire...
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  Linda Pastorino December 31, 2011 at 4:28am

  I think the important point about this is no one wants to pay amber prices for made new resin fakes.

  I have no doubt that my two necklaces (one original Berber necklace with green cord) and one that is strung with all Tibetan amber is no doubt fossilized amber. One or two beads in first necklace might turn to be bakolite. One thing I know is that the real amber is feather weight while the bakolite  and copal is often heavier. Has a more compressed dense quality as does the bakolite which sometimes has swirls in it like something made and poured into a mold.

  I'm more interested in the fakes particular to not being fooled and selling fakes as apposed to real beads whether they are copal, amber or for that matter bakolite which if old I have no problem with. I certainly know however that true fossilized amber beads as the two I showed of my own, are worth far greater to most people than any real old bakolite beads.
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  Joost Daalder December 31, 2011 at 4:51am

  Sorry to disappoint you, Linda, but it is simply not true that materials other than amber are necessarily heavier than it. This has for long been assumed by many, but does not stand up to scientific testing. Similarly with the supposed significance of rubbing energetically to see what picks up paper and what doesn't - another worthless test. It is, in fact, extremely difficult to keep amber apart from other materials visually like it. Sarah, can you re-post that useful long screed by the expert writing on it here a number of months ago? For I think we need that to get a proper view of the difficulty of this subject, and how easy it is "to get it wrong".
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  Linda Pastorino December 31, 2011 at 4:54am

  I only know that when copal (old) and bakolite (old) on original old necklaces is shown with what is deemed as good old fossil amber (mostly easier to recognize than not by the dealers that I know) if you put three of them in a row, 99% of the clients we know here in US will pick the fossil amber. Which is usually about three - five times the price. At least in this country it's like this value wise. 
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  Linda Pastorino December 31, 2011 at 4:59am

  I would tend to disagree that at least from the ones that I have had, copal is more dense and heavier than real fossil amber. There might be variations as per all the samples Sarah showed since I have not held every strand that is available. I have seen copal for the last 40 years and the beads are different in their structure than lets say the beads Sarah shows as fossil amber.  However even in copal and bakalite there are very different productions of it so that has alot of variable qualities. And yes the test of static does not work as a test at all.