So today I bring to you another post about the crystal fakes + frauds out there in Crystal-land. After the last post on the subject, I got lots of questions about others so here are a few more popular ones for you to be aware of.

Amber/Copal Crystal Fakes

Amber (not technically a mineral or crystal since it has organic origins) is supposed to be super-duper expensive, right? So why all this cheap stuff on the market?

Well, that cheap stuff is most likely plastic (ick!!) or copal, pronounced “coh-PAHL”. Copal is often sold as “amber”, but it’s not. Although it is very similar, it’s not amber. Here’s why:

• Amber is the fossilized (40-60 million years old) hardened resin from a now extinct pine tree.
• Copal, on the other hand, is hardened immature recent resin (only 1000 – 1 million years old). Copal is technically almost the same thing, just not as old & the names are often used interchangeably.

BUT, “almost” is not the same and the slight variation makes a huge difference in price! A reputable seller will make sure to note that copal is not true amber.

This is actually rough copal often sold as “amber”.

Sometimes what you think is amber may not even be copal but may be glass, synthetic resins or plastic!

Why is real amber so expensive?

Well, that depends on several things:

• how rare that type of amber is
• it’s age
• color
• whether it has any included insects (remember that Mosquito trapped in amber from Jurassic Park that they got the dino-DNA from? ….which is totally impossible BTW!)

So the value of amber is related to its scarcity, age, possible inclusions of extinct species & durability.

Various shades of polished Baltic Amber

Here are some tests you can do to see if you have a plastic fake, copal or the real deal:

1. Smell test – real amber has a distinct pine scent after heating. Copal will have a “sweet” resin smell but it’s not pine.
2. Solvent test – Copal & plastic fakes won’t pass this test but it will damage your piece.  Drip a few drops of nail polish remover (acetone) on your piece…if it gets tacky or sticky & the solvent takes on the color of the piece, sorry…it’s not amber. Real amber won’t bat an eyelash over this.
3. Melt test – Real amber doesn’t melt, it burns. Copal & plastics will melt at a relatively low temperature (lower than 150 C/300F ). Yes, this is the same copal many burn as a lovely resin (emits a sweet scent it when burned.) If it’s plastic, acccck!! The smell will be horrible! *learned the hard way*
4. Hot needle test– the tip of a hot needle will burn real amber, but copal or the fakes will melt, so best to try this on an area that no one will see as this will damage your piece too.
5. Float test – Amber + copal both will float in saltwater. That’s why it’s so easy to harvest amber along the beach of the Baltic Sea… locals will find it washed up on beaches, especially after storm events. The amber gets stirred up from a layer known as “blue earth”, which is beneath layers of silt + clay on the ocean floor. To do this test, mix about 1 part salt to 2 parts water and dissolve the salt completely.  Drop your piece into the mixture.  Plastic or glass will sink, while amber or copal floats.

Amber also has some cool electrical properties that I wrote about a while back too. Amber + copal will get a negative electric charge while glass will be positively charged.
Plastics will also be charged negatively like amber. Soooo…I don’t recommend using this property to test.

Amber and copal have very similar healing properties of aligning with the solar plexus chakra and inviting in a sunny disposition. However, amber is more powerful than copal.

Irradiated Crystal Fakes

Irradiation of mineral specimens is a pretty common thing. You may not realize it but many gemstones on the market are irradiated to get a more vibrant or deeper color.

Is it dangerous?

Yeah, I’d try to steer clear of them:

• deeply pigmented topaz
• artificially dark (almost black) smokey quartz
• very deep hot pink or red tourmaline
• colored diamonds
• deeply colored kunzite
• some cultured pearls
• vibrant yellow heliodor (irradiated pal aquamarine)
  

  Irradiated blue topaz, peeps! Photo credit: Mauro Cateb

Some sellers choose to take milky quartz & subject it to gamma-ray radiation normally used to clean germs from medical equipment & food (oh yeah…that’s gamma-ray RADIATION on your food….sheesh!).

Anyway, back on topic.

So, when they radiate the milky quartz with the gamma rays you get a deeply pigmented, almost smoky quartz that’s almost entirely opaque like the 1 I show here while I was shopping in Tucson in 2012. BTW, Ron Coleman’s Mine will tell you (if you ask) that their smokey’s are irradiated:

Size Does Matter in Crystal Healing – Tucson 2012!

BTW, quartz colored by natural radiation from Mama Earth is not radioactive & is safe to carry. Yes, Mother Earth NATURALLY radiates quartz that’s included with some aluminum to create smokey quartz but this is a slower, gentler process. I explain more about that here:

Crystal Healing with Smokey Quartz

One telltale sign of an artificially irradiated smokey is that the color fades FAST when exposed to sunlight whereas a natural smokey will retain it’s color longer.

If the seller tells you it’s from Arkansas, raise your eyebrows way up high because smokeys usually don’t occur there + they certainly won’t be very dark like I explain in the vid above. 

This smokey quartz is all-natural – the real deal from Namibia

Now don’t confuse dark irradiated quartz with Morion quartz.

This dreamy stuff just recently came on the scene. It’s a deeply colored, black quartz only occurs in and around volcanic rocks. These babies are RARE & formed by natural radiation caused by nearby uranium deposits from South Africa or in Poland. Natural Morion quartz retains some translucence when held up to the light as you can see in my pic below.

Morion quartz – OMGEEEZ…look at that phantom on the tip! Its hard to see but its there.