How does a mother tell identical twins apart? It's the little things.

The carving is off. A laser can not reproduce hand carving. The curves are too perfect. A hand carved curve may start heavy then taper off as the knife leaves the ivory. A laser curve is identical from start to finish.

The ivory is off. Antique ivory chips were cross cut. Fakes are plane cut. Therefore the graining is off.

The coloring is off. Coloring on the fakes is sometimes motled or faded (not faded from wear). Also the wear pattern on the colored rim is usually off. Antique ivory, many times, is slightly convex (concave on the opposite side). The convex side would evenly wear from the inside out (The concave from the outside in). Many fakes show rim wear on both the inside and outside of the rim and the wear is not even as would be inspected.

All in all, if you are an avid collector of ivory you can spot the junk.

What bothers me is that one collector on this board sees no problem with the fakes being sold. They are "art". I know for a fact that some of the fakes are chips being resold by collectors that got duped when they bought them.