Bakelite Information

Bakelite

Bakelite, also known as catalin, was the very first synthetic plastic. Developed by Dr. Leo Baekeland from Belgium, Bakelite was especially big during the art deco period and dozens and dozens of popular items were made from it. At our auction house we sold many Bakelite items to include, but not limited to - phonographs, radios, rotary dial telephones, microphones, kitchen utensils, cigarette holders, mahjong sets, toys and, the best of all, jewelry.

We are going to briefly discuss bakelite jewelry since it is the most popular bakelite collectible today. This is a really fun collectible and there is a lot of it to choose from. Bakelite was made in a multitude of colors and bakelite jewelry incorporated all of them. The colors include red, green, amber, black, butterscotch and apple juice.

Bakelite jewelry is mostly made up of bracelets, brooches and necklaces. Some of the more expensive pieces that you can collect are just wonderful examples of both jewelry and bakelite. Decorative fruit, animal and holiday brooches and necklaces were very big sellers and are highly sought after today. There are Halloween brooches, for example, that were bringing over $1000 on eBay a few years back.

Now remember that even though Bakelite is a great material it is still plastic nonetheless. It is not 18K gold. People would literally get into wild bidding frenzies over these pieces. Wide carved bakelite bangle bracelets would bring hundreds of dollars. Some of the fruit necklaces commanded the same kind of money. We sold a number of these pieces at live auction and, although they did very well, they never quite equaled the prices that could be realized on eBay for the same thing. The best piece we had was a red bakelite necklace with a number of dangling cherries on it. Again, we are just talking plastic here but it brought $700!

If you are interested in bakelite jewelry but do not know very much about it, you need to watch out for two variations which will influence value. There is the original bakelite jewelry and then there is jewelry made today from old pieces of bakelite. We guess you could call this new "old" stock. To help tell them apart look for either craftsmanship or wear on the jewelry fixtures.

A bakelite brooch that was a brooch when it was first made will have the metal closure on the back attached with small pins. An old piece of bakelite turned into a brooch today will probably have its metal closure on the back attached with glue. Watch for the newness of metal chains or clasps on a bakelite necklace. If they look new they probably are and then it is a new necklace made from old pieces of bakelite.

If you are not a bakelite aficionado, bakelite can be confused with some other plastics that have a similar look but not a similar value. That is why it is important to know how to test a piece of bakelite. You want to make sure you are getting the real thing. There are several ways to do the testing.

One way is to use a non-abrasive metal polish called Simichrome. Do not use just any polish - only Simichrome will work on bakelite. The object here is to get the color to come off when you rub the piece with a small cloth or tissue using a small dab of the polish. If you don't get the color to come off, the piece is not made of bakelite. The really important thing to remember when using this method of testing is that no matter what color the piece of bakelite is the color will always come off as yellow or gold. For example, the color that will come off an authentic green bakelite bracelet is yellow or gold. The same applies if the bracelet is black.

Some pieces test easier than other pieces. Sometimes the color rubs right off with no effort, other times it will take a little extra rubbing to remove the color. If you are testing with Simichrome be careful evaluating the results. This polish is pink in color. Do not mistake the color of the polish with the yellow or gold color from the bakelite. If only the color of the polish is left after rubbing, it is not bakelite. You only need to test a small section of the piece. The polish won't damage the bakelite but you should test the inside or backside of the piece just to be safe.

You may also use Formula 409 instead of Simichrome. The procedure for testing remains the same only you don't have to worry about the pink color like you do with the polish.

Another method of authentication is the smell test. Bakelite does have something important going for it. It is heat resistant. Place the piece of bakelite under the faucet and run the hot water. After it has been under the hot water long enough to heat the piece smell the bakelite. It should smell like camphor or formaldehyde.

If you are unable to use any of these methods, you could try to check the weight of the bakelite piece against a similar sized piece made of regular plastic. The bakelite is denser and will be heavier. However we would recommend one of the other tests if at all possible.

We do have a bakelite auction story but it is not about our live auction house this time. It is about eBay. Not long after we first started selling on eBay, my husband bought a bracelet at the flea market from a very nice woman who only sold jewelry. She had a number of these bracelets but he was leery about how well they might do so he only bought one. It was a bakelite mahjong bracelet. Neither one of us had ever seen one before. It was made from the tiles out of a real mahjong set and the tiles were connected with two thin stretchy cords than ran through the sides of the tiles where little holes had been drilled. In-between the tiles were decorative beads.

Not all mahjong sets have bakelite tiles but a vast majority of them do. When I first saw the bracelet I thought, "Who the heck would ever want to wear one of these?" I didn't want to hurt my husband's feelings so I put it up on eBay. I could not get over the bidding response we received. It would appear that, after doing a little research, this was the first of these bracelets to be listed. There have been thousands since. Because it was the first, it ended up selling for $328. My husband paid $10 for it. He only got two speeding tickets racing back to the flea market to buy every one the woman had.

They continued to do well but we cried uncle after awhile and left the listing of these bracelets to the other people who followed in our footsteps. It seems that some people take their mahjong very seriously. I received hate mail from a number of eBayers; some of these emails just fell short of threatening me. They attacked me, my ancestors and my descendants for having "destroyed" a number of mahjong games.

In my mind, these bracelets were probably made from incomplete sets that could no longer be used because they were missing tiles. These bracelets probably prevented the tiles from being thrown away.

At around the same time, we sold two complete mahjong sets on eBay. These sets had all bakelite tiles and bakelite tile racks and came with their carrying cases. I don't remember how many tiles are in a set but there are a lot of them. While selling these games, we heard from the same eBay people. They insisted that before they could bid we would have to measure the thickness of each tile to make sure that they were all exactly the same.

They said they could not bid on either of the games if just one of the tiles was thinner than the other tiles. I guess if one tile is thinner it would be the same as playing with a marked deck of cards. We have not been near a mahjong game or a mahjong bracelet since. Now that some time has passed maybe we should learn how to play so we won't be afraid of it anymore.

Written by Anne Benedetto, Auction House Talk
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