by David Cowley

Created on: December 20, 2008

Of course there are lots of different types of jewelry that you can choose from, but one of the most popular out there today is the amber jewelry. Amber is composed of fossilized tree resin. Although it is not a mineral it is often classified as a gemstone.

Good quality amber is used for the manufacture of ornamental objects and jewelry. The most expensive amber jewelry is 30 to 90 million years old and will have some type of prehistoric insects or even small vertebrates trapped inside. Sadly to say most of the amber jewelry with insects trapped inside is counterfeited. It is a man made by using a plastic resin and often the counterfeits will have a too perfect posed insect trapped inside.

If you should decide to purchase some amber jewelry, there are a few tips that you are going to want to keep in mind to make sure that you make the best possible decision. More than anything you want to make sure that the stone is actually real, and know that even collectors and museums have been duped in the past into buying specimens that were not real, so be very careful and watch carefully when looking through jewelry.

A simple and quick test to detect counterfeits amber jewelry is to apply a heated pin to the piece in question and if the odor produce does not smell like wood resin then it is a counterfeit. Some counterfeit jewelry will have a thin coat of real resin applied to it so this test is not 100 percent conclusive.

Another test is to put a drop of alcohol on the piece of amber. After the alcohol evaporates the surface should not have any spots on it and it will not become sticky to the touch. If your finger left marks on the stone or if your fingers are sticky then it is definitely a fake. Care must be taken working with amber. If exposed to an open flame it can catch fire and burn. The German word for amber literally translates to Burn-Stone.

Amber colors can vary from yellow to orange and from pale lemon yellow to brown. Although very rare and highly prized is the cherry, green and blue amber. Amber is not made of tree sap which is a common misconception. Tree sap is the fluid that runs throughout the tree caring nutrients and waste products similar to the way the human body circulatory system uses blood for the same purpose. Resin is produced by the tree (particularly coniferous trees) when it suffers from some type of damage.

Amber has been found in great abundance washes up on the shores of the Baltic Sea and during the height of the Roman Empire it was called Gold of the North. The Greeks and Romans establish major trade routs to the Baltic region to collect and trade this valuable substance. Even today Amber can be found on the beaches after a a violent storm.

In the United States Amber has been found in the green sands of New Jersey and under the man-made lake in Ellsworth County, Kansas. No other sites have been reported but anyplace that you can find petrified wood should be a good place to try your luck. You might get lucky and discover a new source of Amber.

Happy Treasure Hunting.

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