Cherry red phenolic beads that look uniform in color can have a thin outer red skin. I fractured a nice old faceted one and discovered this. For the past 3-4 years the pieces have been sitting out on my desk and the fresh surfaces are slowly turning cherry red again. My hypothesis, based on reading the patent literature and other sources, is that many or all the cherry red beads started out amber yellow, and turned red under ambient conditions within a few weeks to a few years. It’s also possible that people liked the red color and it was deliberately induced by heating the beads. But the chemists worked hard to develop phenolic resins that had more stable colors. By the mid to late 20s color stability was mentioned in ads for various phenolic resin products.

I’ll try to post before and after pix of the fractured bead pieces. Unfortunately my before pictures are not the greatest and the pieces are tiny.

When the phenolic resin was made in solid red colors, it’s a different shade of red, at least to my eye. On my display I can see the amber yellow undertone but of course it’s impossible to ID for sure from a picture, and colors will vary on everyone’s computer.