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Buying Amber in Krakow

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Krakow, the Amber City

Amber has always been the native gemstone of Poland. The country’s coastline once supplied ancient Greeks and Romans with their precious ‘electrum’ via the famous Amber Road that used to connect the Baltic Sea with the Mediterranean. Nowadays it looks like amber jewelry and amber ornaments are the basic commodity at every jeweler’s shop in any Polish city. And Krakow can boast numerous stores trading in amber, from reasonably priced souvenirs to costly designer necklaces, bracelets, and rings.

There are two words for amber in Polish, ‘bursztyn’ as an everyday term and ‘jantar’ as a literary expression.

 

Shopping for amber in Krakow

Amber is available in many places in Krakow, from jewelers to stands selling souvenirs. Gift shops offer genuine amber at affordable prices but usually of inferior quality. On the other hand, the city’s jewelers trade in amber as a sideline so few of them stock a wide range of amber goods. And although one shouldn’t expect knockdown bargains anywhere, uptown jewelers often have better prices.

There are also a number of amber shops in Krakow’s central Old Town district. They deal exclusively in jewelry and handicrafts made of amber. Prices are hardly ever competitive but such stores sell a wide selection of quality amber goods, including unique pieces of jewellery and such curios as amber chess sets and sculptures in amber.

Evaluation of amber

Amber is fossilized resin of the Cretaceous and Paleocene trees. The Baltic amber can be as old as ninety million years or as ‘young’ as thirty million years. It may contain embedded objects of the same age such as insects or even tiny vertebrates, fragments of plants, sand, etc.

Amber can be transparent or opaque or anything in between. Its color may vary from ivory to all shades of reddish brown to almost black. Sure, amber is pretty often amber in color.

The value of amber depends on the size in the first place. And since amber is much lighter and usually cheaper than other gemstones, even fairly big chunks of it may be used to produce jewelry.

 

In most cases, transparent amber is more expensive than its opaque variety. And visible inclusions such as embedded insects make amber costlier by far. Also other apparent imperfections – little bubbles, ‘clouds’, shadings, etc. – don’t necessary decrease the value. Not seldom they actually may make a piece of amber more unusual and/or attractive, hence more valuable.

On the whole, amber jewellery is inexpensive. Amber itself counts as semiprecious stone, priced accordingly, and it’s usually set in silver rather than gold. So, compared to other gemstones, esthetic appeal seems more important in the case of a purchase of amber jewelry. Skillful use of amber, its careful selection, ingenious and original design, and impeccable craftsmanship greatly add to the value of amber necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, and other baubles.

Amber basics

Hardness of the amber found on the coast of the Baltic Sea is between 2 and 3 on the Mohs scale, i.e. it’s harder than gypsum and softer than calcite. Specific gravity of genuine amber ranges between 1.05 and 1.10.

Put in flame long enough, amber burns. Heated up to more 200 degrees Celsius it decomposes and yields so called ‘oil of amber’. Also various chemicals have corrosive effect on amber.

The lion’s share of the world’s production of amber is now mined on the coast of the Baltic Sea between Poland’s city of Gdansk and Russia’s enclave of Kaliningrad Oblast. Pieces of amber can also be found on the seashore, notably in stormy weather.


Any following information has been provided by respective establishments on their sole responsibility.

Amber Museum

Amber Museum is located at 2 Jana Street (50 meters from Krakow's Rynek Glowny central square). At the museum we have collected unique exhibits to display amber's natural beauty, to show just how special it is, to provide valuable knowledge about its origin and the history of amber crafting and to make the public aware of how beautiful it is and how diverse its forms and colours are. How amber formed, where you can find it, how it was extracted, and what it was used to make - these questions and many more will be answered by the exhibition called ‘Amber - Its beauty and history’, developed by the PAN Museum of the Earth Warsaw.
amber museum in Krakow

Krakow's selected amber shops:

Boruni
Boruni Amber Galleries are situated in heart of Krakow at 60 Grodzka Street and 2 Jana Street. Galleries offer customers wide range of quality products, from the simplest silver and amber earrings to the most beautiful pieces of jewellery made by the best Polish artists and leading Polish producers of amber and other gems jewellery. We present a free of charge movie in Polish, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and Korean language, which reveals the secrets of amber.
Addresses: 60 Grodzka street and 2 Sw. Jana street. Website www.boruni.pl 
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Shopping in Krakow

The city’s central Old Town historic district, turned into a pedestrian precinct, teems with stores of all sorts.

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Enrich yourself with a first-rate work of art at a very reasonable price.

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