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How to buy real amber online (and avoid the fakes)

Updated: Feb 6

There’s a lot of fake amber out there. Fortunately, there’s a lot of real amber out there as well. This blog post will teach you the way to avoid the fakes and buy the real ones.


1) Know Your Dealer


Businesses who specialize in fossils and amber are trustworthy because they specialize in sourcing the real thing from each country. And if a reputable business is caught selling fake amber, they will lose their reputation and a lot of business. A real amber seller would never sell fake amber. But an anonymous seller would sell fake amber, because there are no consequences for them if they cheat people.


Amazon selling fake amber
Fake amber online - these items are fake plastic amber.

Anonymous dealers, such as Amazon.com and TikTok, will not have repercussions when a customer buys their product and later realizes it’s fake.


Fake Amber for sale on Amazon. the first two are colomian copal, and the third is plastic.
More Fake Amber Online - On Amazon

TikTok Shop, for example, has people reselling items mass-manufactured in China. Here is an example of fake amber circulating around Tiktok:


Fake Amber For Sale on TikTok Shop
Fake Amber For Sale on Tiktok Shop - Labelled as real amber.
fake jurassic park amber
The Same Fake Amber As Above - Being Sold on Tiktok Shop. Avoid any amber that comes in a mass-manufactured box. Real amber never comes in a box like this.

Some reputable websites are:


eBay is a gray area where there are authentic amber dealers, but there is also fake amber dealers.


2) Prices


Real amber usually costs a minimum of $20 and up per piece and can easily get very high. Fake amber can cost five dollars apiece or ten dollars apiece. A very low price is often a red flag.


3) Know how to spot fake amber


There are various forms of fake amber out there, and you can read our blog post here about how to spot amber from fake amber.




4) Colombian Copal


Colombian copal is very similar to amber and has amazing insect inclusions. It is a real material made in nature, but it is not fully fossilized yet, and therefore it is not amber. Recognize how to spot this material by its pale colors, very large numerous insect inclusions, and low price. It is a great material, but it is often marked as amber when it truly is copal because it will dissolve in alcohol.




5) Watch out for pressed and heat treated amber

There is a lot of pressed and heat treated amber out there. 99% of this amber is never labelled as pressed or heat treated. It is important to be able to recognize it, so that you know what you are buying!


One of the things you should be able to recognize the most are the "spangles" on heat treated amber. See this picture below, where the amber has lots of refractions inside? They look like cracks or "starbursts" inside of the amber. Those are a sure fire sign the amber has been processed. Natural amber may have cracks, but these look very different. They will be many small uniformly sized cracks inside the amber. The reason being, they were small bubbles of oxygen trapped in the amber when they heat treated it. These bubbles "pop" inside the amber and leave spangles behind. Personally, i avoid amber with spangles like this. It's not very special to me.

pressed baltic amber sphere
Pressed Baltic Amber Sphere - This piece was made of lots of scrap amber pieces, melted down in an autoclave. They melted it into a sphere shaped mold.

Pressed amber and heat treated amber are a form of recycled amber, and many dealers will sell this and not tell you that it has been processed. Therefore, you will think it is 100% natural, but in fact it is slightly altered. While this is still real amber, it should be clear that it has been re-melted into a new shape because that will always eliminate any insect inclusions and natural features that it has and render it noticeably different than before.



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