Unless these guys have gone to a lot of work making a special glass,
I would think the fakes could be easily be distinguished from the
real things by composition. Moldavites have less than <1% sodium as
Na2O whereas green bottle glass has 13-14%. Similarly, green bottle
glass (soda-lime glass) has 9-11% calcium as CaO whereas moldavites
have 2-3% CaO. Moldavites have 2-3% iron as Fe2O3 and green bottle
glass (7 samples I've analyzed) has 0.1-0.7%. One of those hand held
XRF guns should be able to see the differences for Ca and Fe (they
won't do Na except in vacuum).
Randy Korotev
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