People were always fascinated with pearls especially women. These days, you can find a wide variety of pearl jewelry but often it becomes too difficult to distinguish between real and fake pearls.
Here are ten simple rules to confirm whether black pearls that you have with you is a real one or a fake imitation.
- Observation
All pearls are unique hence by looking closely you can find difference in their colour, size or shape. If they all look uniform then it is a fake pearl.
- Shape
No true pearl can have absolutely neat shape and it will be hard to have all in same shape.
- Touch
Even if the climate is hot, true pearls are cool to touch whereas a plastic bead will become warm during summer season.
- Sound
If you shake and also knock a whole string of pearls, then real pearls make softer or comfortable sound while the fake ones will sound tinny or thin.
- Magnifier observation.
With a magnifying glass of 5x or 10x if you observe the surface, real pearls will have a grain texture, but in imitation you see rugged eggshell surface.
Above 5 ways that are described can generally be used for identifying the pearl but will not damage the pearls. However, following 5 tips are meant only for professionals.
- Knife
With knife or scissors if you scrap the surface of the real pearl you will only get some powder while artificially coated beads will blow layer of film.
- Fire
If you mildly burn the pearls then the surface will be intact and still shiny with no odor. However, fake pearl will smell bad and lose its lustre too.
- Bounce test
If you drop the real pearl from a height of 60 cm on glass piece, it will rebound to a height of at least 35 cm.
- Chemical solution
Fake pearl will lose its lustre if you put into acetone solution while real one does not. Also, real one will get dissolved in HCl acid but fake will not.
- Polarizer observation
Real pearls are semi-transparent but imitation pearls may have transparent layer but no uniform torus.