Important »»»  How do you know?

How do you know?

How do you know that you purchased genuine amber?

Certificate
Ambernecklace.eu guarantees the authenticity of all amber jewelleries sold by itself and its retailers.
We have certificates on all shipments. (See an example on the left.) This manufacturer certificate verifies that all amber jewelleries purchased from us are genuine and authentic. In case you find the image hard to read, it says: "Zertifikat No. 72. Das vorliegende Zertifikat garantiert, dass die Produkte aus natürlichem Ostsee-Bernstein hergestellt sind und allen Qualitätsanforderungen entsprechen. XY (Mitglied der Bernsteinmeistergilde Palanga) to Lakner Trade Kft." It translates to the following: Certificate # 72, This certificate guarantees that the products are made from natural Baltic amber and they meet all quality requirements. From XY (as manufacturer, member of the Guild of Amber Masters) to Lakner Trade Kft. Type, total, invoice #, date, etc. Seal and signature of manufacturer.

Salt-Water Test (Floating Test)
Despite of the fact that we buy only from certified sources, we do run the salt-water test each time. Amber is very light. Its density is just slightly greater than that of sweet water (1,05 - 1,10 g/cm³), that is tap water. Therefore, if placed in tap water, amber sinks to the bottom, but if placed in saturated salt solution, it floats on the surface. In case of genuine amber, both tests should be positive (it should sink down in tap water and float in salt water). If one of the tests proves differently (e.g. it floats in tap water and/or sinks down in salt water), the necklace is certainly made from an imitation.
You can check it yourself, since it is that easy:
Take 2 glasses and fill them up with tap water (about 2,5 dl each). Put 2 tablespoons of salt in one of the glasses and stir it well, until the salt almost dissolves. (The salt will not dissolve completely, since it will be a saturated salt solution.) First put the necklace into the sweet water glass and then into the salt solution. If by accident you put the necklace first into the salt water, then you should rinse it in tap water before continuing with the test.
Despite of the fact that we buy only from reliable sources, we do run the salt-water test each time, in case of all shipments.

Further information on amber, authentic versus fake, and other smart practices
Amber is a 20-360 million years old fossilized tree resin, which may contain different inclusions of insects and plants. All of our ambers and products made from them, originate from the Baltic region.

"The gold of the blue earth" (translated from sulinet.hu)

Once amber forest covered a great part of Fennoscandia – geographic term used to describe the Scandinavian Peninsula, Finland, Karelia and the Kola Peninsula. The fossilized resin impregnated into the so-called blue earth, representing the lower level of the oligocene-glaukonite formation. From these primary sites amber was carried by rivers as drifts, with waves of the Baltic Sea, or by glaciers as moraine to the secondary sites, from where amber was actually mined."

Attempts to counterfeit inclusions are not new. Already in the 18th century some tried to counterfeit amber and tried to trap lizards and frogs, and the production of fake amber inclusions is still developing.
Sometimes even the amber itself is counterfeited – in several ways. In some cases it is rather difficult to distinguish real amber from the plastic resins, except if tested by heating (characteristic odour), or for softness, or for density.
Amber is often counterfeited by the addition of synthetic resin. These are easier to pick out, due to the clearly visible separate amber pieces poured into the plastic resin.

Natural amber
Natural Amber refers to amber that has not been artificially modified or enhanced by man, except for polishing and cutting. Only this kind of natural amber can be labelled “genuine”. There are 2 groups of natural ambers: sea amber (“fished” in the Baltic- and the Northern-Sea, or found along their coasts) and mined amber. In our webshop you find solely natural amber.

Due to its small density, amber floats on top of seawater; that is why it was so easy for the fishermen of the Middle Ages to “collect” them. Amber is burnable; it is the only kind of décor-stone that is burnable. If you rub amber against a cloth, it becomes electrostatically charged; and since the Greek word for amber is electron, that we arrived to the origin of “electricity”. (translated from hu.wikipedia.org)




Who to identify real/natural amber?
There are several methods to differentiate genuine amber from the imitations, each of them is based on a specific property of amber.
1. If real amber is rubbed against a wool cloth, it becomes electrostatically charged and it lifts up small pieces of paper.
Attention: Unfortunately there are a few synthetic imitations that can react the same way.
2. If real amber is heated, it burns slowly. Amber burns slower than plastic, and it emits a much more pleasant smell.
3. Of course, you should not burn your newly bought jewellery, the hot pin test is sufficient as well:
Heat the tip of a needle with a lighter, and poke the amber (at a not too visible part). In case of true amber, a nice resinous smell is emitted. Plastics melt under the hot needle and emit a stinking chemical smell. In case of amber the hot pin leaves a much smaller mark, since its melting point is much higher (approx. 375 C), it hardly emits any smoke, it doesn’t really sizzle, and it emits a much more pleasant scent.




There are various kinds of imitations made of other materials, but there are “enhanced” ambers as well.
Besides the most obvious imitations made of plastic or glass, there are the “enhanced” ambers, in case of which the genuine prehistoric value is destroyed:

 Suspiciously transparent amber (refining):
There is a method to “enhance” amber by soaking it in hot oils in order to improve transparency, to remove residues and trapped air bubbles. In the process amber softens and the air bubbles disappear. After cooling off, this kind of amber becomes harder and that way more suitable for jewellery production. However, after this enhancement process, the amber loses its “natural value”, and it can be labelled as “processed amber”, an ambroid. However, if the refining process is gentle enough, the cleared or refined amber does not lose all its valuable volatile content.

Pressed amber:
Pressed amber is more difficult to distinguish. This “enhancement” involves softening the amber, including waste particles and small pieces of amber, and pressing it in an autoclave, resulting in a uniform mass of amber. Most of the pressed amber and the jewelleries made from it are sold as “genuine”, and this “slight” enhancement process is often not mentioned.
We, on the other hand, sell only non-pressed, 100% natural amber.

How to distinguish enhanced amber from natural amber?
It is almost impossible for non-experts to distinguish pressed amber from genuine amber . Often it is only the higher price that suggests genuineness. Here are some tips on how to avoid enhanced amber:
Enhanced amber is too homogeneous.
Brownish edges might become visible at places where the separate pieces melted together.
Pressed amber is never as lively and full of patterns as natural amber.
What the most important is that heavily processed (treated at high temperature) and pressed amber does not contain the healing volatile components of genuine, NATURAL amber, that soothes teething pains for children.