Dear friends,

All we know that quite a lot of “enhanced” shells (mostly cowries and
conidae) are on the market or in private collections of cheated
collectors: painted, coated, baked, repaired, polished shells, and so on;
e.g., recently somebody talked about cypraea aurantium treated with acid
and then polished; some years ago even Raybaudi was wrong in considering
the specimens of the so-called cypraea lobettiana.
My question is: how do you detect a fake shell? How can you discover if a
shell was baked, or discoloured under the sun to make it an albino? How
can you find out the result of Shell Doctors’ art? It would be very
interesting to know more about methods of discovering frauds: any
suggestion and/or opinion?

All the best
Francesco Guarracino
Roma - Italy

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