I have been getting more emails recently to inquiry about various methods to identify fake agarwood, among them, many emailed me their agarwood product photos and requested me to help. I try to help as many of them as possible since this agarwood portal served as an agarwood information and sharing platform for many agarwood lovers and newcomers. Many requested for a fee based authenticity report, which i have to apologies again as we do not provide this service due to many grey areas. See below for some of the fake agarwood "stories"  :

I remember, there was this friendly uncle who came to me and asked me to help him for verifying the authencity of one big bag of agarwood, many of which are solid, heavy and full of woody scent. As i carry many bags of wood daily, this bag should be a 10kg+ in a white wheat bag.

This bag of agarwood according to him, was purchased by one member of hiw temple commitee and suppose to be put on auction in yearly festive dinner.

It turns out to be a totally fake agarwood, most likely from vietnam/indonesia tourism agarwood products(The ones you can easily find in agarwood retail shops or on the street) There was sadness in his eyes, guess someone may have been cheated or some fund was misused for profits.

I decided to put up one post for identifying fake agarwood and hopefully it will be useful for our readers across the globe. A picture speak thousand of words, especially helpful for a poor writer like me.

There are many types of fake agarwood, ranges from natural and artificial ones.

On the List number 1: The Grandfather imposter since 1960s, Kayu Buaya or Crocodile agarwood, scent is totally different, price is very cheap, a few dollar per kg and oil is commonly used for agarwood oil mixing. If you are wholesaler, chances are you will accumulate quite a big number of this wood due to the supplier side giving them as "bonus". Which you have to accept, most people wanted to earn a bit more using lesser or fake wood.





On the List number 2 : Hundred years of Agarwood fossil




If you are truly a wood lover, even though the fossil wood does not belongs to aquilaria family trees, you should treasure it as well, this is another form of art in the tree's life. It happens that many facebook posts or in certain forum of agarwood lovers, you will have new member posting to ask if this twenty kilo of wood is agarwood, it's not easy to strike lottery my friend.

On yearly basis, we will have around 50-80 emails, coming in to ask about this magical fossil wood, sadly, i have yet to find one photos on my email servers that triggered my interest to fly over and buy that piece to be added to my private agarwood collection.


On the List number 3 : Grandpa's mystery agarwood timber logs.




Among all the inquiries i have, i have some pretty photos of timber logs, all from our readers, some looks like sandalwood, some like acaia and many others. None of theem looks like agarwood, except for a few which looks like some different types of gaharu buaya.


On the List number 4: Standard "Tourist type of Fake Agarwood"



You can easily find lots of fake agarwood similiar to the type above, infact, we have friends who travel in asean and bought back some fake agarwood bracelets, decorative pieces, all smells very different from the real agarwood, in very dark color but maybe harmful to health if you decide to slice it for tea or medicine. You can easily find them in some airport agarwood retail shops, fengshui shops and most of the time, the shop owner has both the real and fake in stocks, burning the real chips for you and selling you the super value for money wood :)

On my next post i will be posting new generation of fake agarwood products which are hard to spot even for old time players of agarwood.