Green Caribbean Amber
When you read that the so-called “Caribbean amber” was “recently found on an unknown small Caribbean Island” you should give it as much factual credibility as the Treasure Island novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. And start thinking of pirates that are after your money. Or one of the stories of Brothers Grimm. How about “Pirates of the Caribbean Amber”?
This “Caribbean Amber” which comes in greenish tones is nothing else but just artificially colored (pressure, vapor and heat) Colombian copal.
. See: Wikipedia: Caribbean Amber
What they have “recently found” was the way to make Colombian Copal look green.
Now, this so called and much advertised “Caribbean Amber” made with Colombian Copal is beautiful, clear, well presented, exquisitely mounted. But it is
- far from 30 – 50 million years old – probably less than 2000 years.
- de-naturalized
- not green by itself
- not what commonly is accepted as “amber” (see Wikipedia/amber)
- not from the Caribbean, but from South America
- not been found “recently in 2005″.
Anything else missing?
So, don’t believe what you are being told. It is just so-called “Business Speech” (BS).
Hardened Colombian copal is relatively inexpensive, because it is a result of mass production. It is by no means a rare natural gem found in some mysterious mine in the Caribbean.
With this we are not saying that it is worthless. To the contrary.
Just look at the pretty strand of beads made from it. Very nice, and surely useful for all kinds of applications. Go to
ColombianCopal.com if you are interested. The might even give you a good deal.
But is the “Caribbean Amber” as exclusive and special as it is advertised?
Is it worth the relatively high price, only because you get this fantastic story delivered with it? Well, you decide for yourself.
And if you can’t afford the real thing, it definitely is a nice surrogate, an “Ersatz-Amber“. But they should at least tell what you are buying. Instead of telling you all kinds of Caribbean stories. You have the right to know it!
The real thing? Is there something like REAL “Caribbean Amber”?
Definitely. You bet there is. And it also comes in natural green. It is found in the Dominican Republic (not Dominica, mind you!!). But it has not been “discovered recently”. To the contrary.
Columbus and the Taino Indians exchanged amber gifts when he arrived on the island he called “La Hispaniola” .
(See Dominican Amber http://www.blueamber.info/dominican_amber.php and http://www.blueamber.info )
Besides the Green Amber (see: http://www.caribbeangreenamber.com one of the specialties of the Dominican Republic is the Blue Amber (see: http://www.blueamber.com ). It is green and blue by nature, not enhanced (they have no idea how to do that), green amber and blue amber just the way it comes from the mines.
There are different versions of green amber, the rare translucent kind (which the above mentioned copy-cats imitate), a opaque green, a green with black stripes (almost marble), a bluish green, smokey green, olive green, but also the regular honey, brown, black etc. and the most rare BLUE, purple, eggplant, teal and what have you.
With all these different shades of natural colors of Dominican amber you would think that nobody has to produce fake green Caribbean Amber. But to the contrary. In natural amber one piece never looks like the other. Most of the time it has some natural inclusions as characteristics that make it unique. But people get brain-washed as you know. They are being told that amber has to be clear, pure, transparent like glass, and they believe it because most of them have no idea what amber and amberization are all about. And because of this, they fall easy prey to the mass industry.
See, industrial amber is much easier to handle, which is a great advantage in mass production. It’s like cookie-cutting. For this reason, most of the Baltic amber also is transformed from its original condition to beautiful beads and cabochons – that look all the same. Most of the typical brown-reddish amber colors, the cognac colors, and many of the others, also the shiny discs called “sun-spangles” and the clearness are artificially produced under pressure and heat in an autoclave adding nitrogen and later in an oven varying time and temperature.
This manipulation is done with other gem stones as well, by the way. But the uninformed public does not know the difference between natural and artificial, and believes whatever is being said on TV and by the press. If you are reading this to get informed, you belong to a minority, believe me.
A renowned scientist, Prof. Dr. Mark R. Mayer writes: ‘First of all, beware of pieces that are too uniform or too perfect. Amberization involves processes that result in imperfection in pieces, imperfections that often give amber its personality. So, bubbles, plant debris, clouds, inner layers, cracks and fissures, insect parts, opacities, swirls and stress lines are present to some degree in most pieces and can help verify authenticity. Beware, for example, of a necklace of perfectly matched, transparent beads — that would be most unlikely.”
Therefore, it proofs again the old axiom: when it looks too good or is too cheap to be true…it is.
