Caveat Emptor Amber

At a wholesale bead show this past weekend one of the Chinese vendors was selling fake amber polished display pieces. I had seen this sort of thing before but this time I got around to actually capturing images of it. Below are five images I discretely snapped and provide additional useful information included in the corresponding captions for each image. I hope some of this information helps some consumers out there to become smarter consumers.

An obviously "staged" scene replete with a modern bee posed with roots within faux amber resin.

A modern scorpion staged with root material in an obviously-posed fashion.

A modern bee posed with roots but this time in "reconstituted" amber as opposed to resin.

Note the "reconstituted" amber features cooling fractures that look like small leaves within.

Both of these are too cheap to be real amber and yet over-priced for what they are.

All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved)