Information on Ambergris

Appearance:
The color should be dark or light brown, sometimes even white.
Also squid beaks may appear on it, squid beaks look like pieces of dark brown or black, somewhat triangular, shiny plastic and usually vary in size from half a centimetre to one centimetre long.

Texture:
It is hard like a stone but breakable,granulous and waxy. If you scratch it with your fingernail some little parts will fall off.

Odour:
Ambergris has a very strong smell, these are the most common odors of it :
Marine [the smell of the sea], animal [like a horse], musky sweet, [like the smell of a new car], seaweed, faecal [like excrement].

Properties:
Ambergris is found in lumps of various shapes and sizes, weighing from ½ oz (14 g) to 100 or more pounds (10 to 200kgs).

Testing your amber:
As a test for ambergris the hot wire or needle test is the most simple since it requires no special apparatus. A wire or needle is heated in a gas or candle flame for 15 seconds and then pressed into the sample to a depth of 1 cm. If it is genuine ambergris, a dark brown to black opaque resinous liquid will form around the wire and appear to boil. Touch the material with the finger before it cools and if the sample is true ambergris it will leave tacky, pitch-like "strings" sticking to the skin. When the wire, which retains portions of the melted material, is again heated in the flame, true ambergris will give off a white fume having the same characteristic odor as the solid, and then burn with a luminous flame.

Let us have a look !
Descriptions are useful. They can give us some excellent clues regarding your find but they they don't give absolute proof. We need to see what you've got !
So it is important if you can mail us some photos. If we think it is amber, we will ask a small sample to evaluate.