Spotting Fake Amber: An Easy Way of Working a Jurassic Park Reference Into This Blog

I know you were there with me in the nineties. I know you saw that mosquito suspended in amber while watching Jurassic Park and thought it was the raddest thing of all time. And I know that this sense of history (or prehistory) gives amber a general air of mysterious otherworldliness. Which is why fake amber can be such a bummer. Who wants to find out that they’ve been duped by a dead bug in some plastic goop, and have no possibility of reincarnating dinosaurs? Not me.

Trouble is, amber is the sort of material (like jet) that is relatively easy to fake. See, amber is tree resin which has fossilised, and the look and feel of it is often (and sometimes convincingly) reproduced using synthetic resins.

Not only this – there is major confusion between the substance that can properly be called ‘amber’, and something called ‘copal’, which is tree resin that is several million years old, but has not yet fully transformed into amber.

But how can you test amber to make sure you’ve got the genuine article? Well, there are a number of ways, but many of them are wildly impractical and require specialist knowledge, skills, or equipment. So here are a couple of basic, risk-free ways of testing amber to work out whether it’s ridgy-didge:

1. The Float Test

I saw this one on Antiques Roadshow. Essentially, amber will float in a solution of water and salt, but synthetic imitations (and copal) will sink.

2. The Static Test

This is so fun - I think I may have done it at Scienceworks or similar as a kid. Amber has an electrical charge, so if you rub it quickly against a piece of soft fabric, it should be able to easily pick up small fragments of paper.

There you go - maybe you should try testing your amber to see how it holds up. There are many more precise tests you can use if you really want to be sure, but these two have an irresistible Play-School level of science that I just can’t get enough of. 

Are there any authenticity tests that you love, or have found ineffective? Or have you ever realised that you own fake amber/jet/pearls etc? 

P.S. I haven’t quite worked out how to reincarnate dinosaurs, but watch this space.