How to tell if amber is real or resin

Amber is beautiful, but with so many imitations (a lot of them very good imitations), how can you tell if it's real or not?  We recently got some amber into the store that was... suspicious.  So I decided to find out. 

I did some researching (which means that I called my dad and he Googled it while I was on the phone with him).  From AmberGallery.net, we found an article about how to test amber and decide if it's real or fake.  Here's an excerpt.

Testing: It's not really difficult to tell real amber from fake plastic or copal.  You can try just a few simple tests:

1.Copal (immature resin) and plastic fake amber do not hold up to solvents.  Take a few drops of acetone (fingernail polish remover) or alcohol and drip it over the surface of your piece.  If the surface becomes tacky, or the fluid takes on the honey golden color of the substance, you can bet it's not amber.  Amber is not harmed and will not dissolve under these solvents.

2.Amber does not melt.  It will burn away like incense.  Copal will melt, as will plastic. However, the plastic will release a horrible chemical smell upon burning, while copal may release a smell similar to that of amber.  Amber smells sweet, piney and pleasant when burnt, the very reason it has been used for centuries as incense.

3.Amber is buoyant in salt water.  That's why it is easy for locals on the Baltic Coast to find it washed up on beaches, especially after storm events. The amber gets stirred up from a layer known as blue earth, which is beneath layers of silt and clay on the ocean floor. To do this test, mix about 1 part salt to 2 parts water and dissolve the salt completely.  Drop your piece into the mixture.  Plastic and copal will drop out, while amber floats. 

I decided to go for #2.  Robin, an awesome customer, also recommended this method, and to be honest, it sounded like the most fun.  I took a bead and stuck it to a knotting awl so I could light it on fire and not injure myself.  However, I don't have a lighter in the store, no matches either.  Thankfully, our friends at Fat Jack's sandwiches did have a lighter that they so kindly let me borrow. 

The result:  NOT AMBER, these beads are resin.  They definitively smelled like burning plastic.  It was also not as cool as I would have thought, I thought the bead would actually catch fire, but it didn't, it just, got warm.  Lame.