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I've never seen an earring finding like that. Really unusual.

Get some glue dissolver (usually sold along with superglue or available on ebay and similar). Slosh the dissolver around the finding then put it into a small ziplock bag and wait. Take out every couple of days and very gently wriggle to see if it has come loose. If not top up the dissolver and...

Hardness varies from pearl to pearl. Even within one pearl there can be different resistance as one drills. There was a time, when bead nucleated pearls were getting started, that some growers seemed to be using rock hard nuclei. Drill bits would blunt in seconds and be red hot. Even now some...

Plus some buyers will simply bulk buy while others - to the dismay of the wholesalers I'm sure, will wade through bags to select one or two strands. While I was doing the latter last september in Heng Mei another buyer came in and within ten minutes had bought three huge bags of fireballs...

Don't they look amazing! So many pearls but these were outstanding.

Is the Lord President of the Council, Penny Mordaunt, wearing fireball earrings? (The woman has arms of steel!)

Depends on whether the pearl will need to be drilled and if the drill hole can be placed there to obliterate it. Sometimes Mum nature helps lowly pearl jewellers by marking pearls with a big 'drill here'

This is obviously selling...

Its a white pearl not a dyed black but this was on the first page of ebay here.

Fiji pearls don't look like over-dyed freshwater pearls. They do often (but not always) look like Tahitian pearls with a slightly muddy overtone.

Do they? How do you know? Has the wire been assayed? It is possible to make your own simply by winding wire around a mandrel. I've never tried. That is a low end clasp. I certainly would not use 14ct gold wire with such a clasp. Also - would the gold be too soft to do its job?

It could be an early dyed freshwater stick pearl. There were a lot of stick pearl rings around for a while...maybe around 2005(?)

What do you want? Great pearls or cheap pearls? Because there are no great cheap pearls. Or if there are I've never found out where to get them in all my years around pearls. Find a supplier who will be honest about their stock and whether they have pearls which meet your wants. It's impossible...

I took the BB slowly going up, then, having survived that I went back down in one and my legs gave out under me at the bottom like jelly. All while these little tiny Chinese ladies wizzed past me without breaking a sweat. But the views, and the feeling of achievement, were worth the effort.

Definitely early Chinese freshwater cultured pearls. Not wild pearls.

Are you going to test your heart and lungs with a trip to the Big Buddha?

Because they are very low quality and they have no luster as well as no smoothness. Poor things.

It may also be that circles simply don't get to market. I can remember a few years ago when no-one admitted to coloured akoya pearls. Now we fight over them! These were fresh that day when I took this and I believe I can see faint circles on two at least = plus some really knobbly 'rosebud'...

Silk/satin

Well that stinks