Lately I've been studying phenolic resin aka Bakelite beads, and along the way I've run into beads that are clearly neither amber nor Bakelite, along with some beads advertised as Bakelite that turned out not to be.

Here are some of my findings.

First set of pics are what appear to be hand-made beads that are trying (not too successfully) to look like old amber. They are similar to the very large faux amber beads discussed a week before BCN went down. I bought these so I could find out what they are made of - and they are polystyrene. Probably made from old cassette boxes like the ones shown in Sarah's video. I don't think they would fool anyone, but note the ground-down "flash" around the holes. This is a dead giveaway that the holes were made by pushing a hot skewer through. Then the flash was ground off. In other words, plastic!