Post #401732 by Tamapoutini on Sun, Aug 17, 2008 3:03 AM

On 2008-08-16 18:40, surfintiki wrote:
Just thought I'd share a good article I found on Jade...

Very interesting, thanks for adding that SurfinT! The world of jade dealing has long been a place for sheisters fishing for the unwitting buyer. Similar-but-different scams still exist, the worst of which sees British Colombian, Siberian or other jade carved into Maori designs and cunningly labeled "genuine nephrite jade" - which it is, but who asks 'originating where'? 'carved where?' when its a quarter of the price of the genuine article? A more recent pseudo-scam that Ive noticed is that it now seems quite acceptable to call NZ bowenite (which the Moari termed Tangiwai) 'pounamu', and perhaps lead the buyer into thinking that they were buying nephrite, which they are not. The Maori did include nephrites' softer and less scratch-resistant cousin bowenite (a high quality serpentine) in the 'pounamu' basket, but they knew the difference between the two very well. Basically bowenite is an inferior & slightly more common material with less inherant value.

*Funny, his rant about 'thulite' being passed off as nephrite/jade - I was once sent a nice looking block of 'pink nephrite, otherwise known as thulite' to try (I thought it might make a nice pink hei-Tiki for the girls.. or the more sensitive boys), turns out to be very weak, crumbly and behaved nothing like nephrite.

Again, thanks. Very interesting and relevant to me at least. :)