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It's a good question. I don't know either and would like to know. I'm with you preferring color and organic shapes over rounds. I have a huge soft spot for a perfect drop though.

Thanks Lisa (blush icon). :o

Let's cool the jets here lol. Wiwi, I appreciate your spunk but the people who are commenting are experts, whether they say so or not. Wendy and Pattye both have extensive experience in many different types of pearls as well. Caitlin is kind enough to call me an expert which I consider myself...

Thanks for the thoughtful thoughts Pattye, Dave and Lisa. I think what was so troubling about it was that I didn't expect anything. Nothing. Nada. Period. Then there was The Pearl. It possessed me with it's beauty and changed the game that I thought I was the master of. In retrospect I...

Looks Tahitian to me and $480 for such a large pearl seems like a good deal too.

Thanks Louise, Pattye, Lisa and Alex for your kind words. :) Yeah, it was an unsatisfying story to write because the happy ending was missing. A friend of mine who read it said that he thought Julien was a jerk. I kind of agree but at the same time he put the "ball" in my court. Chalk it up...

Hi everyone, The following is last week's blog post about A Pearl that I still think about, 20 years later. I just posted part two on my blog if anyone is interested. Thanks all! :D "Are you sure?? This seemed crazy to me. I searched Julien?s green eyes for any sign of him kidding around...

Thanks you two for your thoughtful mind expanding posts. Steve, I didn't know that conch pearls were harvested sustainably. I assumed they were like the P. margaritiferas that have been decimated where ever they existed. I guess the primary difference is that the shell of the black lips are...

Nice unearthing Steve. :) I get the romance and tradition of natural pearls. I don't mean to alienate anyone with the following as I have some very dear friends that deal in them but what I take issue with is the all the animals that necessarily die in procuring them.

Thanks Rusty, I was hoping you would back me on this one. I was surprised that no one else did. Kat, thanks for reminding me. I've got a terrible clog in my sink and I've been meaning to put some Dranix on my grocery list.

I bet there was a similar discussion as this going down when the first pearls were being cultured in Japan.

Hi CSJ, I didn't say that there weren't any weird sources from Tahiti. :p Whatever the provenance it's pretty though.

I agree with the others that it is most likely from Tahiti (the number of pearls harvested to produce one strand of color matched peacocks like that is staggering) but I'm surprised to hear everyone say that there are no Pinctada margaritifera pearls from Australia. As far as I know, there are...

Hi Adeline, Yeah, unfortunately there are still enormous quantities finding their way onto the Hong Kong market that have never passed Tahitian export controls. The export statistics, if you can call them that, are wildly, ridiculously incoherent and you can see the proof at just about any show...

Hi Kelly, Good question. As a rule, the larger the pearl, the more they will tend to get nearer to the government regulation 0.8mm on each side of the nucleus. As oysters grow older they tend to lose their capacity to produce layers of abundant, quality nacre (big surprise, right?). The key...

Hi Dean and Derek, Identifying these little guys as cultured won't take much at all, just a basic x-ray machine will do the job. Natural pearls will have a very small center typically whereas cultured will have larger ones whether they be tissue nucleated or bead nucleated (like in the "second...

Lisa, I thought your answer was spot on, well thought out and helpful, especially sending readers to the links at the bottom (something I forget about myself). We are all expanding our knowledge of pearls, no matter where we are on our pearly roads.

Not for realz (photoshop fail). Best of luck on the new site Adeline!

Hi Dean, Get in touch with Jeremy Norris. He is a member here on Pearl Guide. Good luck!

Haha, yeah it was definitely one of those doh! moments. My buddy and I both were blaming ourselves (I'm sure it was my fault though) so he was mumbling about how he couldn't believe he had done such a thing and boy were we screwed now, etc. Living on the ocean I've learned that you can see...