Organic Gemstones: Amber and Beeswax

If you often walk around jewelry markets, you must have heard lots of old sayings. One famous line goes, “A diamond is forever.” There is another jade proverb too: To judge jade, you check its three outer layers; you must look close to see if its texture is smooth and fine. People also say, “Amber takes a thousand years, beeswax takes ten thousand years.” Now, amber is the lightest gemstone on earth. Is this old saying really true? Is amber truly one thousand years old, and beeswax ten thousand years old? Let us learn all about this together below.

Amber comes from resin that pine and cypress trees leak out. It stay buried underground for roughly five thousand years, going through full petrification and the evaporation of its organic substances to take shape. Every drop of resin fell in different natural surroundings back then. This is why each piece carries unique flow lines, plus totally different shapes and outlines. Some pieces still hold the faint sweet scent of ancient tree resin. Many even trap prehistoric tiny plants and bugs inside their bodies. For this reason, people also name amber resin fossils. It give huge help to archaeologists when they study ancient natural history. Different underground environments create amber with diverse colors and textures. People split amber into many types based on its looks: insect amber, golden amber, blood amber, blue amber, green amber, beeswax and more. You might notice insect amber get mention twice here, as many sellers always highlight bug-filled pieces to customers.

This means beeswax is only one single category under the big amber family. No matter it is clear amber or opaque beeswax, both form tens of millions of years ago. If the petrification time is too short, the material will stay soft, just like modern copal resin you can buy in craft shops. Beeswax is the opaque kind of amber. The Baltic Sea area is its main producing place, and most top-grade beeswax all come from this region.

Beeswax has many different quality grades. The most well-known grade is chicken oil yellow beeswax. Chicken oil yellow beeswax owns soft, delicate texture. The whole gem block is fully opaque with clean, pure warm yellow tone. Top-grade pale beeswax have a special name—white wax. White wax have three sub-types: porcelain white, bone white and ivory white. One important tip for buyers: do not spend high money buying surface white wax. This fake-looking wax only has a thin white outer skin, while its inner body is common low-quality yellow beeswax. Many new collectors make this costly mistake without careful observation.

Nowadays more and more beeswax lovers chase old beeswax crazily. Many people mix up its definition, so here is a clear explain. Old beeswax do not refer to beeswax that formed millions of years earlier. It describe beeswax jewelry that human already wear, use or collect for a very long time. If a beeswax pendant or bead have been held and polished by human hands for one hundred years, it counts as real old beeswax, compared with brand new beeswax goods just finished by craftsmen last month. Long-term hand rubbing will leave soft warm patina on old beeswax surface, a feature new wax can never own.

Natural beeswax need millions of years to finish petrification, so every full natural beeswax stone is extremely rare and valuable. Many shoppers wonder why lots of cheap beeswax decorations fill the market. A large part of these low-price goods are second-generation beeswax. Workers make it by pressing tiny broken natural beeswax crumbs and leftover edge scraps together under high pressure to reshape solid ornaments. It still count as material made from real natural beeswax, not plastic or full chemical copies. Its production cost cut down a lot because makers use waste fragments, so its selling price is much lower than whole raw natural beeswax pieces. New beginners can choose reconstructed beeswax for daily wear, but experienced collectors always prefer pure whole natural beeswax for long-term collection and value preservation.