This is turning into a pattern. I firmly believe that ONCE is coincidence, TWICE is a pattern concerning human behavior.
And the pattern I see shaping up is that Arabia itself, and now Oman, is allowing pearl dealers to lie about cultured Chinese freshwater pearls being other than what they are. Not to mention, Vietnam, Philippines, and Indonesia. Or the islands off the coast of South America.
We had that fairy tale of a few months ago where the guy paid north of 50k for pearls from an "ancient pearling family" in Arabia which the pearls were not super large -11mm for the largest, and not high quality fw -were passing "Basra" pearls from the Arabian Nights fairy tales. These are "Andaman" pearls- from islands in the Bay of Bengal, surrounded by pearly nations. This is clearly a variation on the "Basra pearl" fakery going on in some of those Arabian peninsula countries which are not pearl countries themselves and never have been. Individuals in those countries obviously think hyping CFWP as a magical pearl from mysterious lands far away will seduce foreigners to buy crap.
My college roommate bought some "real" pearls in GREECE(!) about 40 years ago. They were actually so fake she was embarrassed to tell me she paid a high price- clueless that Greece did not grow pearls or that those were glass covered with nail polish-so to speak.
Tourists seem to like to bring pearls home from exotic places and everywhere there are people who will sell them- a fw pearl anointed by fantasy.
