The Blue Amber Blog

There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute

Indeed. The fantastic world of forgers, frauds, hoaxes and shenanigans. What would this world be without them?

If it had not been for a hoax or forgery Idaho would not have its name, the Republican Party no elephant, Loch Ness no monster, creationists no Piltdown Man, and, ah yes, some factions within the amber community would have no business at all.

Just what is forgery? And what on earth is a ‘shenanigan’?

Often interpretation is based purely on legal clarification and/or point of view. For example: is the Baltic habit to finagle with amber forgery or just reconstruction? Is peddling copal as amber a hoax? To many the answer to either questions is obvious, but if we take a step back then arguments can be found to defend copal as amber (“It’s just younger!”) and demonstrate that Baltic amber is much prettier once ‘cooked’.

Sometimes however, a hoax is as obvious as the time when this guy wrote a bestseller about da Vinci and everybody thought it was based on facts.

That is to say, not everyone gets it at first.

It takes a few stumbles, but eventually we all learn to keep our eyes open and learn to separate truth from fiction. Or, to put it in terms we amber folks can dig: know the difference between Dominican amber and Shenanigans – Shenanigans being a Gaelic word for what the Very Nasty Dominican Amber Forger Boys do.

Amberos

Last week it happened again. Two ‘amberos’ put-putted on their scooter up to our offices and submitted a lovely fist-sized piece of blue amber. As per custom it was still covered in the dirt straight from the mine with only a thumbnail-sized window chipped into it revealing what looked like a purplish blue. The fact that the dirt on the rest of the chunk could not be persuaded to be removed was a dead giveaway. A deep look at the amberos revealed but furtive innocence. This clump was quite obviously a phony. We warned them that if the piece was a fake, we would never buy from them again. Both amberos insisted that this was not the case, this is a real one, how dare you to suggest, what with my honor, blablabla. You could hear their fingers click as they crossed.

Our polisher at first agreed with the amberos: a very nice piece. Then he tried to enlargen the window so we could see deeper into the piece. As he started on the grinding wheel he noticed an odd smell. And then chink! went the blue amber ‘window’ as it took its leave from the rest of the piece. The whole lump was cheap yellowish/brownish amber and the dirt and blue amber ‘window’ had been glued on: the Coqui Case.

The Case of the Sticky Frog

The most common question about fake Dominican amber we get here is concerning copal. eBay is awash in it, some of it claiming Dominican citizenship, and we know that Colombian copal is being sold as Baltic amber. But the truth is that copal posing as amber is the least of our worries. The biggest problem we have with phony amber is the Coqui Case.

Coqui is the name of a superglue brand in Puerto Rico, which took it from its national symbol of a sticky frog (no pun intended) that likes to climb up walls and rain on unsuspecting tourists. The brand name stuck (okay, pun intended).

Since it dries to a rock-like consistency it is used by sneaky amberos to coqui blue amber chips to ordinary amber. Sometimes larger pieces of amber that broke apart during mining are coqui -ed back together and polished until the crack is nearly invisible and covered with dirt.

Another blue amber trick is chipping a window into a possible blue amber candidate to see if blue comes visible. If it doesn’t, then a different side is chipped, so long until a blue side is found. The other none-blue windows are then covered up with dirt and coqui. This piece then looks like a blue amber piece because one side happens to be blue. Upon polishing, however, it proves to be ordinary amber.

The Case of the Lost Impostor

Another aspect is the act of sneaking a cheapy in with the good stuff. An old peddlers trick and you got to be aware of it. A scruffy yellow amber may at times be added to a stash of blue amber, or a few pieces with nothing but dirt as enclosures may be shoved in with the good enclosures in the hopes that the buyer will not notice it. And when the keen buyer does, then the reaction is either “oh dear, how did that get there?” or a head-on, in-your-face denial, come hell or high water this is a real enclosure, see, see? That’s a bug! — As if the power of suggestion was enough to convince us.

Since Dominican amber is found in different mines, the quality varies. The really good stuff comes from only three or four mines out of the dozen or so available. The difference lies in transparency, color and size, even shape, and ultimately price. For those uninitiated it is easy to mistaken Dominican amber for Dominican amber. Understandably.

It takes a trained eye — better yet, two — to separate a batch of raw pieces. Again the Nasty Amber Boys will mix the mines of origin to suit their needs and claim a single provenance for a higher price. They even cover the cheaper pieces with dirt from the good mines, so it looks as if it came from the good mine. Blue amber for example from the Bayaguana / Sabana area will look wonderfully blue or purple, but after a few months in the fresh air loose the blue coloration and become boring blond.

Very unsporting.

The Case of the Necklace

We have been talking about the raw material so far, but what about jewelry? Is it possible to fake it?

Dominican amber, like the Baltic, can be enhanced. Much Baltic amber for example is liquefied (cleared, autoclaved) and later supplemented with coloration and looks like a cup of tea with a few drops of blue ink — a far cry from the luminescent blue of Dominican blue amber. But the Dominican Amber Forger Boys have not yet reached this artistic level of cooking it in hot paraffin or glycerin and then pressing it into shape or any other form of reconstruction. So far the only minor enhancements done to jewelry, besides the same sly-hand tricks mentioned above with the raw material, are at times esthetical.

For example a yellow cabochon can be given a red hint by painting its back side with a marker before it is set in its silver frame.

Instant Gratification

There is just something about facing an ambero when you know you are dealing with a shenanigan: the flapping puppy-dog eyes, the sinless shadows, that immaculate smile that seems to say “Who? Meeeee?” while they shove the bogus bagatelle in your face and speak of honor and respect. Any decent Klingon would have had their heart on a platter.

I can only attribute the will to sell the piece anyhow to the Philosophy of Instant Gratification: better to have a stack of nice bills for that trinket now and who cares about the future anyway.

It only remains to be said that fortunately the real bad Faker Boys amount to only a handful. But it is those few that can hurt business. Some are head-on dishonest, some just sneaky and some just plain clumsy. Some are so good that even honest amberos with a lot of experience have been fooled. Also, a vast gray zone exists for some who are just a little bit dishonest if an opportunity calls for it. Nevertheless, over the years a natural honesty has worked its way into the Dominican amber community, since honesty breeds repeat business, and repeat business bestows moolah. Thus, a cheating ambero will emerge and try his stick to peddle some cow hokey, but will eventually be outed by fair amberos with the result of having trouble breaking back into the straight business. This does not protect us run-of-the-mill buyers from forgery, but it does help in limiting pitfalls.

Atlas Shrugged Off

It’s a different story on “Teh Internets”. Here knavery is elevated to an art form and the 1rst Amendment is live ammunition. Dot Communism is the opiate of the people. The underlying business philosophy for many seems to be not so much ‘open source’, but rather an objectivistic rational egoism along the lines of ‘every man for himself’. Ayn Rand would be proud.

Sources such as eBay being flooded with cheap amber shows just how far some people will go to dip into the amber business and sell ‘cooked’ pieces or copal as pure amber, be it from the Baltic, Colombia, Dominican Republic or, for all we know, MiddleEarth.

The best way to protect your self from shams is doing research before buying a shady piece on eBay and/or relying on known and trusted suppliers. Online groups of amber experts such as the fossilamber group can also help in identifying real amber, as well as the enclosures therein. And Blue Amber? Let me just take this as an opportunity to plug ambarazul.com, the world’s leading Blue Amber supplier.

Seriously though, we got some nice pieces.

All right. Enough horn-blowing.

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