What do you think this bracelet is made of?
Appearance: It is green with black spots, and some of the beads show a radish-fiber-like (萝卜丝) internal texture, which visually looks consistent with green nephrite jade (碧玉).
Weight: The bracelet consists of 22 beads, each approximately 7.9–8.0 mm in diameter, with a total weight of 16.54 g. Based on the bead size and quantity, this weight is consistent with what would be expected for nephrite.
Test: There’s an old saying that nephrite should not “take a knife”—if a knife can scratch or bite into it, then it isn’t nephrite. However, when I tested it with a pair of regular scissors, some of the beads could be scratched. For comparison, I tested some known nephrite beads with the same regular scissors, and they did not scratch.
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Test with glass. The beads remained undamaged, while the glass was visibly scratched.
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I also did a simple specific-gravity test and got approximately 16.54/5.38=3.07. I understand that the elastic cord inside the bracelet and the suspension thread used during testing could affect the accuracy somewhat, but even allowing for this, I would expect the actual SG to remain above approximately 2.9, which is consistent with nephrite.
What do you think this bracelet is made of?
Then things became more confusing.
I switched to a different pair of hardened-steel scissors and repeated the scratch test. With these scissors, almost every bead in this bracelet could be scratched. But when I tested my known nephrite beads with the same scissors, even some of those could occasionally be scratched as well.
So my question is: Why would this happen?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.