Baltic amber

[venny]

Hi Everybody

Hope you all enjoyed Christmas.We have a Baltic cruise coming up and wondered if anyone had advice on the pitfalls of fake amber.

Ian & Mary

[orchestrapal]

Google Amber, Real or Fake, and you'll see that it will be hard for you to tell. Our guide in Gdansk told us that almost all of what you see on the street is FAKE. If you like it and it's cheap. so what. If you want the real thing find a reliable store recommended by someone who knows the area.:)

[LHT28]

They also have some nice pieces on the ship if you don't find any ashore that suits you

;)

[loum140]

Just to be sure we got the "real thing", we purchased earrings at the Armory Museum shop in Moscow for Mom. However, found lots of wonderful innovative designs that I absolutely loved being hawked by street venders, so we purchased them too. I don't really care if they're real or not -- it's the color and style that attracts me and I feel good wearing them. Gdansk has streets of shops devoted to amber venders. Happy shopping.

[Jana]

Onboard my Baltic cruise on Regatta last summer, the expert taught us how to tell fake from real.

 

1. Hold it in your hand. Real amber gets warm. Plastic doesn't.

 

2. Lick it (ewww). Amber has no "taste," plastic does.

 

3. If it has whole bugs, it's plastic.

 

I found that the street vendors in Gdansk had expensive fakes and the controlled stores in Russia had the best deals on real amber. Amber is the easiest of all "jewels" to duplicate in plastic; if you see mold marks you pretty much have an idea that it isn't real :) Also, there are only 14 (I think?) distributors who are licensed to distribute amber in all of the Baltic states and from what I heard, they are careful with the stores they select to sell it.

 

On the other hand, I bought a Tibetan silver amulet with "beeswax amber," a yellow opaque amber, for my mother this Christmas. I bought it online and I knew it would be plastic. It's so pretty though, and looks so real that it doesn't matter; in fact, when I got it I tried hard to make it warm up in my hand, wanted it to be real! It looked like it was! BUT: and here's the important part... I paid very little for it. If I had paid a great deal for something I was told was amber and it turned out not to be, I would be furious.

 

jana

[CintiPam]

If you are doing a tour in St. Petersburg, the guide should be able to direct/take you to a store which sells the real thing.

 

Enjoy your trip; St. Petersburg is amazing.

[bbwex]

This string reminds me of my attempt to be certain that I got real jade when I was in Hong Kong. I was staying in the Hilton and decided that the jewelry store in the hotel was a safe place. I suppose you don't have to be a genius to realize that the ending of the story is that when I got home, and was getting it appraised, it turned out to be fake! On the other hand, it looks real.