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Boxwood
Boxwood tiles come in a wide selection of colors and types of wood, some have printed faces and others are faced with cellulid, pyralin, paper and other plastics. Some have a uniform grain molded into the synthetic material to imitate ivory.
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Bamboo
Bamboo tiles come in different sizes and thicknesses. These tiles were used in a wide range of different types of sets ranging from cardboard boxed beginners sets to tin boxed sets and traditional five drawer rosewood boxed sets. The carving on bamboo tiles in general is not as fine and detailed as in bone or ivory due to the difficulty in carving the bamboo material.
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Bakelite
Bakelite tiles were produced with hand carved faces as well as also molding into the tile faces, the molded tiles will show ridges from the displaced plastic from the molding process. Bakelite ranges in colors, typically bakelite tiles are a light yellow to a dark orange color. Some tiles have a yellow face and a piece of red or black bakelite glued to the back of the tile. There are also solid black bakelite tiles.
There are different tests said to be able to identify bakelite, personally I feel by look is the best method. Other method include rubbing the back of a tile with a Q-Tip dipped in Dow's "Scrubbing Bubbles", true bakelite will leave a yellow or orange-brown color on the Q-Tip. Another method is by rubbing your finger on the back of a tile or heating it up with hot water (caution the paint on these tiles will run!) when heated bakelite produces a carbolic acid smell.
Bakelite was developed in 1907 and most American sets with added jokers were produced in bakelite in the late 1920s and 1930s.
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Catalin
Catalin tiles were produced from the 1930s on, it is a phenolformaldehyde plastic. Its basically a refined bakelite plastic and looks very similar but is a little more translucent. The molded images in catalin are more uniform and cleaner than in bakelite, also the "scrubbing bubbles" test will produce very little coloring onto the Q-Tip. When heated or rubbed it will produce a formaldehyde smell.
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Pyralin
Pyralin has a deeper shine than Bakelite and a white color, they don't seem to darken quite as much as bakelite tiles. Painted images sometimes bleed into the pyralin.
Most Pung Chow tiles were either faced with pyralin or were made from solid pyralin tiles.
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Bone
Bone is typically backed with bamboo but was also backed with ebony wood. Bone can be distinguisted from ivory in that it has the Haversian System in the ends and along the faces of the tiles. Ivory does not contain the Haversian system, so any presents of the haversian system indicates the tiles are made from bone. Ivory does at times have similar looking black marks that is the Cementum, or where the outer layer of the tusk was attached, but these black marks are solid black marks and not the little tubes of the Haversian system.
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Ivory
Ivory has a cross grain that is not present in bone, and ivory doesn't have the Haversian Pits and Tubes that are present in Bone. Ivory tiles can be backed with bamboo, and ebony wood. Ivory can also contain a grain down the faces of the tiles, more of a larger coloration and very disimilar from the dark lines from the Haversain system in Bone.
A visual inspection under strong light and with the help of a 10x loop will usually show the cross grain or "Schreger" lines in ivory. Depending on the angle of the Schreger lines determines if the ivory is from an Elephant Tusk or a Mammoth Tusk. Elephant ivory averages 115 degrees or higher, and mammoth ivory averages 90 degrees or less.
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Modern Plastic
Modern plastic tiles come in a varaity of different sizes and colors, they can be produced with two or three layers of color. The images are molded into the faces and are very regular in their designs. In the 1960s through the 1980s plastic tiles were produced with bamboo backing imitating the traditional bone and bamboo tiles.
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Material Identification 