Real amber floats in strong salt water, glows pale blue or green under a UV flashlight, feels warm and light in the hand, and smells of pine resin when touched with a hot needle. Glass sinks and feels cold. Most plastics sink, smell acrid when heated and look dull under UV. Copal, which is young resin a few hundred to a few million years old, passes the float test and the UV test, but turns tacky within a minute under a drop of acetone, where amber does not. Those four checks, in that order, sort nearly every bead and pendant at home. The piece that passes all four and has inclusions, flow lines or cloudy patches is almost always amber. The remaining question, whether it is Baltic, pressed, heat-treated or something rarer, is what a gem lab answers.
Most amber jewelry is worth modest money. A modern cognac bead necklace sells for about $40-150 as of late 2026. The pieces that reach the hundreds and low thousands are antique opaque butterscotch and egg-yolk beads, large clean pieces with insect inclusions, and Dominican blue amber, and those are exactly the pieces copied in plastic.
How to check yours, step by step
- Float it. Dissolve about seven teaspoons of table salt in a cup of warm water and stir until it stops dissolving. Drop in a bead or the loose pendant, not a strung necklace with a metal clasp. Amber, at a density of about 1.05-1.10, floats or hovers. Glass, Bakelite, polyester resin, acrylic and celluloid sink. Copal and polystyrene float too, so a float is a pass on glass and most plastics, not a verdict. A sink is a fail for amber unless the piece has a metal cap or a heavy stone.
- Shine a UV flashlight on it. Use a long-wave UV light (365 nm or the cheap 395 nm kind) in a dark room. Baltic amber fluoresces a milky pale blue, green-white or yellow-white; Dominican amber a strong blue; some Burmese amber violet-blue. Copal fluoresces too, usually a brighter white. Most plastics show little or nothing, or a dull purple that is just the light reflecting. A piece that goes dark under UV is probably not amber.
- Touch a solvent to a hidden spot. Put one drop of acetone (nail polish remover) or isopropyl alcohol on the back of the piece and wait a minute, then wipe. Amber stays unchanged. Copal goes sticky and clouds, and the drop leaves a dull mark. Polystyrene and some resins soften as well. Keep the drop small and off the front; copal is damaged by this test, which is the point.
- Smell a hot needle. Heat a pin for a few seconds and touch it to an inconspicuous spot, such as the hole of a bead. Amber resists the pin and gives off a resinous pine or incense smell. Copal melts easily under the pin with a sweet, fresher resin smell. Phenolic plastic (Bakelite) smells of carbolic or formaldehyde; celluloid of camphor; casein of burnt milk; acrylic and polyester of sharp chemicals and the pin sinks in and strings. This test leaves a tiny mark, so do it once and on the back.
- Look inside with a loupe. Hold the piece against a lamp. Natural amber shows flow lines, tiny gas bubbles in swirls, cloudy patches with soft edges, and often disc-shaped stress fractures called sun spangles, which come from heat clarification and are normal. Pressed amber, made by fusing small chips under heat since the 1880s, shows elongated bubbles pulled in one direction and cloudy boundaries between the fused pieces, like a mosaic. Plastic is usually too clean: perfectly even color, round bubbles if any, and swirls that look stirred rather than flowed.
- Examine any insects. Real inclusions are usually small, often partial, sometimes surrounded by a milky film where the body fluids reacted with the resin, and never centered for display. A large, perfect, modern-looking insect sitting in the exact middle of a clear piece is in resin, almost without exception. Copal often has real insects too, which is why the acetone test matters.
- Weigh it in the hand and against the cheek. Amber is warm to the touch and very light; a 60 gram necklace is a big necklace. Glass is cold and heavy. Bakelite is noticeably heavier than amber for the same bead and clicks when the beads knock together, where amber gives a softer sound.
Amber against the things sold as amber
| Test | Baltic amber | Copal | Bakelite or phenolic | Acrylic, polyester resin | Glass |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salt water float | Floats | Floats | Sinks | Sinks (polystyrene floats) | Sinks |
| UV long-wave | Pale blue, green or yellow-white | Bright white | Dull, little | Little, or dull purple | Nothing |
| Acetone drop | No change | Tacky, clouds | No change | Softens on some | No change |
| Hot needle | Resists, pine smell | Melts, sweet resin | Carbolic smell | Acrid, strings | No effect |
| Density | 1.05-1.10 | 1.03-1.08 | 1.25-1.35 | 1.15-1.30 | 2.4-2.6 |
| Inclusions | Flow lines, spangles, small partial insects | Fresh-looking insects, crazed surface | None, even color | Perfect centered insects, round bubbles | Bubbles, swirl lines |
| Feel and sound | Warm, light, soft click | Warm, light | Heavier, sharp click | Light, plastic click | Cold, heavy |
| Simichrome or 409 on a cloth | No color | No color | Cloth turns yellow | No color | No color |
The combination that identifies amber is float, fluoresce, resist acetone, smell of pine. Copal fails acetone. Bakelite fails float and smells wrong. Resin fails float and smells wrong. Glass fails float and feels cold. A piece that passes all four is amber, and the question becomes which amber and in what condition.
What amber sells for
Prices below are what pieces sell for on resale platforms, at antique fairs and at auction as of late 2026. Baltic amber prices rose sharply from about 2010 to 2017 on Chinese demand and have eased since; large opaque beads still carry the premium.
| Piece | Typical weight | Typical price, about | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Modern cognac or honey bead necklace, clarified | 15-40 g | $40-150 | The most common amber necklace; most are heat-clarified and that is normal |
| Modern amber and silver pendant or ring | 3-10 g | $20-80 | Sold by the piece, not the gram |
| Raw Baltic nuggets, small | per gram | $1-3 | Larger clean pieces over 50 g reach $5-15 per gram |
| Antique butterscotch or egg-yolk beads, opaque | 40-80 g | $300-1,500 | Graduated strands with the original screw clasp at the top |
| Antique butterscotch beads, large faceted, 100 g and up | 100-200 g | $1,500-5,000 | The strand collectors chase; also the most faked in plastic |
| Pressed amber beads, 1900-1950 | 30-60 g | $60-250 | Honest material, lower value, often sold as natural |
| Baltic amber with a common insect, fly or gnat | 1-3 cm | $30-150 | Visible, intact and identifiable moves it up |
| Baltic amber with a rare inclusion, spider, beetle or lizard | 2-6 cm | $500-5,000 | Only with a gem lab report |
| Dominican blue amber, cut piece | per gram | $5-30 | Strong blue in daylight against a dark background |
| Burmese amber (burmite), cut | per gram | $5-50 | Reddish, often with inclusions |
| Cherry amber Bakelite necklace, 1920s-1930s | 40-80 g | $100-400 | Valuable as Bakelite, not as amber; sold as either |
| Copal beads or pendant | 10-50 g | $10-40 | Often sold as young amber, which is generous |
The butterscotch row is where the money and the trouble are. Old opaque Baltic beads in that color, especially large, faceted or barrel-shaped, sell for several dollars a gram, and plastic strands made to look like them sell for a few dollars total. Our guide to whether costume jewelry is worth anything covers the Bakelite side, which has value of its own.
What it is not
- Cherry amber. A trade name for deep red translucent beads from the 1920s to 1950s. Nearly all of it is Bakelite or another phenolic resin. Good news in a way: cherry Bakelite sells well on its own.
- Green amber. Baltic amber that has been heated with a dark backing to turn green. Real amber, treated; priced lower than natural color.
- African amber. Large opaque beads in Mali and Morocco trade strands are usually phenolic resin or copal, not Baltic amber, and sell for $50-300 a strand as ethnographic beads.
- Reconstituted or pressed amber. Genuine amber chips fused under heat. Lower value, often sold as natural; the mosaic boundaries under a loupe give it away.
- Copal. Real resin, too young to be amber, from Colombia, Madagascar or New Zealand (kauri). Cheap, often full of insects, and sold by the ton to the inclusion market.
- Resin with insects. Clear polyester with a modern beetle or butterfly in the middle, sold as a souvenir and then relisted as amber by someone who found it in a drawer.
A piece that floats, glows and resists acetone but shows a perfect mosaic of cloudy boundaries is pressed amber. A piece that floats and glows but goes tacky is copal. Both are honest materials; the mistake is the label, not the piece. The same label trouble runs through our guides to jade and turquoise, where treated and reconstituted material is sold under the natural name.
How WorthPic reads amber photos
WorthPic runs on the newest and most capable AI model available, tuned for exactly this kind of identification. It works from what light does inside the piece. Photograph the necklace laid flat on a plain background, a single bead against a lamp so the interior shows, a close shot of any inclusion or cloudy patch, the clasp and any mark on it, and the whole piece under your UV light if you have one, and it names the type of amber or imitation the photos are most consistent with, reads the flow lines, bubbles, spangles and mosaic boundaries that separate natural, clarified, pressed and plastic, judges the bead shape and clasp style for the era, and gives an honest price range for that type, size and condition. Where a photo cannot show the answer, usually the acetone and hot needle results, the density and the smell, it says so and tells you which test to run and which photo to add. It identifies and estimates. It never authenticates or vouches; a gem lab with a spectrometer, with the piece in hand, is what settles a strand or an inclusion worth hundreds or more.
What to photograph
- The whole necklace or piece laid flat on a plain white background in daylight.
- One bead or the pendant held against a lamp, so flow lines, bubbles and cloudy patches show. This is the photo that settles most cases.
- Any insect or inclusion as close as your camera will focus.
- The clasp and any stamp on it, since antique clasps help date a strand.
- The piece under a UV flashlight in a dark room.
- The piece on a kitchen scale, with the reading visible, since prices for beads run by the gram.
When to get it looked at in person
- A gem lab such as GIA, or an independent gemologist with infrared spectroscopy, separates Baltic amber from copal, other ambers and plastics without damage and issues a lab report. Worth about $50-150 and essential for any inclusion piece or strand you expect to sell for over about $500.
- An antique jewelry dealer who handles beads can judge an old butterscotch strand, its clasp and its age by eye and give a buying price, which is itself a reality check.
- An auction house jewelry department for large antique strands, where the buyers who pay the top prices are.