If you have been collecting agarwood or reading them online, you will most likely start from fresh and new agarwood, slowly you may move to soil type agarwood. As high quality red soil agarwood are being sold in high price among the marketers or trader's hand, you will most likely encountered soil wood from indonesia and malaysia region or those funny filipino soil agarwood :)
 
For the benefits of new readers, fresh agarwood are those which are found above ground, in various parts of the tree, you have agarwood ears, heartwood, the cross section "pizza" type and etc. Underground agarwood mainly conssist of soil agarwood and some "Dead agarwood" which varies on the age, soil condition and resin level. So when fresh agarwood are buried underground, it is converted to soil agarwood.



Fresh and natural agarwood smells the best when you crave out the white wood, exposing the dark resinated portion, if you have a chance to crave out fresh agarwood, you will know that closer to the dark resin parts, the white wood is soft and sticky and this scent is one of my favorite scent of agarwood. I like to clean wood when it's wet, not only its softer, i can also enjoy some fresh and sweet agarwood scent, slowly exposing the shape of the piece of agarwood especially for beautiful shape, i usually ask workers to draft out the outline and i will do the fine craving myself.



Lower grade Soil agarwood are used in incense making, higher grades used for fumigation enjoyment in house but quality varies alot, many strange version of soil agarwood are out in the market, just look for those value for money and good smelling type.

The appearance of low grades soil agarwood are fibrous and looks as if it has little or no resin inside. Higher grade has that solid and shiny resin underneath the "soil skin" which you can enjoy a very matured and cooling scent. Some collectors does not like to clean the "soil skin" of the high grade soil wood, making these as a unique agarwood decoration.