Authenticity of ancient beads of the ordinary variety is fairly easy; it's the very expensive rarities that are often counterfeited. There's no money making copies of ancient beads that are often less expensive to obtain than the cost of making any modern bead.

The fact is that when you've handled half a million ancient beads or more, you get a "feel" for antiquity...you just plain "know" that a bead or string of beads feels "right".

Short of that, you can be aware of the actual site-source of the beads you're getting, and the reputation of your tombari can be important. Tombari are your diggers who go out and dig up the graves from which the ancient beads are excavated.

Mummy beads and wheel beads can be found just about anywhere, even scattered on the surface of some ancient sites.

What does this all mean to you? It means that we guarantee our description of every ancient and modern bead creation we produce, and if it ain't so, your money back, period.

We know our ancient beads, but we also have outside experts verify our beliefs about them, including a few museum curators and restoration/conservation experts when unusual and rare beads turn up.

The bottom line is that our beads are absolutely unconditionally guaranteed 100% to be what we say they are!