Featured Amber, Bakelite or Other?

What do you think is the marerial?

 

Amber. Opaque egg yolk amber. Odds are those beads are pretty old too. It looks like there's a fly inside one of the beads. Nice score!

The big market for those is overseas.

 

Thanks. How can you tell Baltic or other? Any guesses on the origin? It’s endless, no clasp. Not sure is necklace or prayers beads.

 

Good question. I'd think Baltic, but...dunno. It's a necklace; those are graduated beads, and prayer beads are generally uniform. They're also the wrong configuration for prayer beads. As to age, they've got some for certain. How much? No idea.

 

Very nice.

 

Listed the necklace. People started asking for buy now. I guess I’ll just sit back and observe.

 

Butterscotch amber. Worth about eight times as much as gold. Make sure you open this to the Middle East. I suspect early 20th C. I sold a very battered short necklace for a friend for about $900 a while back.

 

It looks like a very beautiful pressed genuine amber necklace, probably Baltic. It has some age, I think 1930s. And I'm with obb, butterscotch.

Because of all the amber lookalikes, and even fakes, terminology has become much stricter over the last years. To avoid problems with irate buyers, I think it is better to be safe than sorry when selling amber or amber lookalikes.

Amber doesn't appear in nature in a range of perfectly formed shapes, so your beads have undergone some kind of treatment other than just cutting and polishing.
Looking at the photos I think it could be pressed or reconstituted pressed amber, and probably Baltic.
- Pressing is heating chunks of natural amber until they become malleable, and then shaping them under pressure.
- Reconstituting and pressing is a similar process, but using small natural amber chips.
Both are genuine amber, but not natural amber.
They can be sold as genuine amber.
These two are not bad, they are the top range of modified amber types. They still have the properties of amber. Most genuine amber bead necklaces are made from pressed or reconstituted pressed amber.

Some tests you can use:
http://ethnicjewelsmagazine.com/the-identification-of-amber-and-its-copies/
I always start with feeling the weight, then UV light and, in the case of a bead necklace or bracelet, move on to the float test. Please don't scratch jewellery, or use hot pins.