FW Cultured - Certified Natural

[Valeria101]

Only see what you see... Freshwaters, certified natural (AGTA) - even the seller uses quotation marks of 'natural'! Not on the price, but that's another story - in that context, they are almost cheap anyway.

http://www.rauantiques.com/28-8099.html?&rel=C&relid=1988

 

[jshepherd]

Natural as in natural color. That is quite a pretty penny for cultured freshwater!

 

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Valeria,

I assume they mean that these pearls are solid nacre of natural color and untreated. Yes, pearls like that do command such prices. They also come in color changing at a premium from that.

Zeide

 

[mikehrz]

Natural minus the quotes:
http://www.rauantiques.com/28-8726.html?&rel=C&relid=1332
and for that price, they'd darn well better be true naturals. What do you think, natural pearl experts?

 

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Mike,

Believe it or not that is a normal retail price for a true natural of upper medium quality and cream beige color in this size range.

You may have been starteled by the first example of the mauve strand for 34 grand but fine klonks in untreated color command stellar prices.


(most of the b-s has been removed)

 

[jshepherd]

Zeide;

I think you have either forgotten my response to your pricing question a couple of months ago, are greatly exaggerating my answer, or you simply misunderstood. In order to clear that up, I have reposted your question and my answer below:

Hi Susan,
My tissue-only nucleated drops are a minimum of 12mm and a maximum of 14.4mm measured perpendicular to the drill hole and a minimum of 14mm and a maximum of 17.1mm measured hole-to-hole. I have not seen many of those around but some do pop up every now and then. How much they cost always depends on who is selling them and where. I do not know a going market rate, but surely Jeremy should know.
Zeide

My response:

Not really, actually. When the market was flooded with baroques we went nearly exclusively to high-end rounds to carve a niche and to avoid competing with the billions of low-end pearls and thousands of low-end pearl dealers on the market. I often travel to Zhuji with friends of mine in the beading industry, and their average costs for baroques go from about $15US per kilo and up. I am sure that certain premium strands could cost substantially more, however. These would likely either be loose matched outside of a factory, or sold as a single piece from a factory.
I do not personally buy any of those pearls unless I am doing someone a favor. In the end they spend about $10k US for every $100k US that I spend with a converse amount of volume.

I am missing that part about "Wilmas, Water, orient", and astutely appraising your gem quality pearls for $15 per kilo in my response. Did you read something in my response that I cannot see? It is the 2nd time you mentioned it, do I figured there must be.

Baroques do sell in China for $15 per kilo and up. It is a beader’s market, not mine. I travel with the owner of Bella Findings to Zhuji quite often. He buys baroques, I buy rounds. He sells low grade pearls, I sell high grade. We make for perfect purchasing partners. I have never even considered buying anything other than round until just recently due to the multiple requests for gem drops, ovals, and others. So, I may do it, but they will be priced accordingly - much lower than rounds of equal size.

So do I know what the “Klonks” sell for that you so often describe? No, I do not. Would they cost $100k? Does anything coming out of China cost $100k? Not a chance. Do they even cost $10k, I would be willing to bet that they do not even come close. The only single freshwater pearls I have seen selling for near $1000 per pearl were gems close to 20mm in size - and I have never seen enough to make even a spaced pearl necklace.

The referenced strand in the first post is outrageously priced. There is nothing overtly special about the strand. The color is not rare, the matching is good at best, the quality is not the highest possible (yet it is good), and the graduation is done in such a way to simply trump the last millimeter. It does not even come with a blue box or special brand name - to me it is a rip off of eBay proportion.

To gauge the pricing on that seller’s freshwater pearls, check out a couple of their other freshwater pieces:
http://www.rauantiques.com/28-3245.html
http://www.rauantiques.com/28-5444.html
http://www.rauantiques.com/28-4351.html

There are your perfect examples of $15 per kilo pearls - less than a dollar a strand. Sold here for $1000 per strand.

 

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Jeremy,

With untreated pearls it is like with untreated gemstones. There is a whole separate market where those who want pure goods put up waiting lists at "top-the-other-guys'-prices." Your original comment made it sound as if you could get top end goods for peanuts and I really would love to see a deal like that.

 

[jshepherd]

One thing I do understand are the pearls produced in China. And I really do not think my post indicated I could get top end goods for $15 per kilo. Read my post as it is written, because that is what I meant. And I still stand by it because I am right and it is true. I think it is very clear and succinct, and I am not going to apologize for your interpretation. How can this be taken as anything other than what it says?

I often travel to Zhuji with friends of mine in the beading industry, and their average costs for baroques go from about $15US per kilo and up. I am sure that certain premium strands could cost substantially more, however?

I have seen the special pieces that the "big bosses collect" and sell a pearl at a time either to their friends or people that are looking for something special. These pearls come out during the day while sitting around sipping tea, or at night at the KTV?s. I have also visited enough farms and factories over the years to know there is not a secret sect doling out mysterious gems to the world's select buyers. Everything there is for sale for a price. The true valuable pieces are still the rare giant rounds and perfect symmetrical large pieces over the random shapes. Maybe when those pearls hit the shores of the US some collectors are willing to pay a fortune for them - they are simply lining the pockets of everyone in between. If buyers actually pay the prices listed on M.S. Rau, I guess there is a sucker for anything.

 

[Valeria101]

Natural as in natural color. That is quite a pretty penny for cultured freshwater!

That would clear things... Other fancy freshwater pearls on the same list come with that 'natural color' mention. Too bad the report doesn't show to clarify. I was wondering if this time the owner hadn't required a complete report for the pearls, not just for color. If so, that is one interesting confusion. Of course, no problem as the things come with the right ID in the end regardless of the mysterious 'paper'.

No comment on the price from me, those pearls look their worth: if in that parallel universe they inhabit that is their worth, more power to them. If such could be had for (allot) less, it is amazing enough... and awfully lucky.

 

[pattye]

Hi All and Zeide,
What's this about color changing variety? That is new to me, and sounds amazing? Please tell us more---thanks so much as always for sharing your knowledge--
Pattye

 

[Zeide Erskine]

Hi Pattye,

Most pearls change tone depending on the light source but some really flip flop in a very noticable way. Such pearls command premium prices.

Zeide

 

[pattye]

Oh, so it's not like a pearl from a particular type mollusk, like what kind of color changes would one find? This is all so fascinating--
Pattye

 

[Slraep]

To gauge the pricing on that seller’s freshwater pearls, check out a couple of their other freshwater pieces:
http://www.rauantiques.com/28-3245.html
http://www.rauantiques.com/28-5444.html
http://www.rauantiques.com/28-4351.html

There are your perfect examples of $15 per kilo pearls - less than a dollar a strand. Sold here for $1000 per strand.

Here is another example:

http://www.rauantiques.com/28-8931.html

If this seller is to be taken seriously then I cannot, for the life of me, imagine paying almost $40,000 US for a "RARE" black diamond, native cut and drilled, heat treated I3 industrial quality necklace.

The only rare thing about an I3 black diamond rondelle is that it survives the drilling process through all those inclusions. Don't ever go near it with a torch. Yes it does have a clarity rating! I3 for inclusions galore. That rating is given to the rondelle before a beautifying heat treatment turns it very dark as compared to the yucky brown it originally came in.

It would have been good to at least glamorize this piece of carbon with an 18K clasp of inlaid SI1-2 micro diamond chips and perhaps a fancy sprinkling of gold beads in-between the rondelles.

Even if this necklace came in a genuine Tasmanian wolf-skin bag, it would still be highway robbery.

This piece is unbelievably astronomically priced.

Slraep

 

[Caitlin]

Something is wrong with my notification and I didn't see this thread until today.
The original mauve CFWP necklace in this thread is quite pretty. but it is overpriced to say the least- not to mention the shady nuances in the blurb- natural, indeed!
I am not impressed by rau antiques and their disgustingly inflated prices! They are the epitome of mystiquery for the nouveau riche.
Anything you can get from them you can get elsewhere at a more fair price I swear I will not even bother to clik through anymore, if their name is in the link!
I would ask Jeremy to get it instead- even if it takes time to put it together. I know it wouldn't cost what that one does! BTW, I hope he goes on the hunt for the color changing pearls!

I am still learning from the ZESPA!

 

[Caitlin]

Natural minus the quotes:
http://www.rauantiques.com/28-8726.h...l=C&relid=1332
and for that price, they'd darn well better be true naturals. What do you think, natural pearl experts?

Mike H
Hi mike
After their blurb on the CFWP being natural, I wonder just what they mean? That the color is natural? That the pearls are actually really old natural pearls? I don't trust their blurbs amy more than most ads on ebay! It is the same kind of cheating, only it is a grand scam!

 

[Valeria101]

A tad surreal alright! Clearly open prices are expected to be high (by some rule of thumb) and that really is not the only webshop that tries out the pricing game... Wonder who came up with the idea

IMO, the Rau's, Cherry's and Pala's of the net make good media outlets - if not for the prices, then for the types and quality of merchandise: often the news of some great new thing comes first in these places, and that makes perfect sense to be so, IMO. A couple of times really the same objects turn up at a fraction of the price tag elsewhere... well, if established venues like Rau cannot help rise prices for a deserving product, who will. Clearly, I hope they take the time to succeed, otherwise I'll never get my pearls

Anyway, it has been a pleasure to note high brow freshwater pearls turn up in the best jewelery windows; a very appropriate neighbourhood indeed They might be consistently priced at 'entry-level', but what that means is very relative.

If anything, the current situation with the best pearls being priced lowest feels no less surreal. I am used to stories like this about one-off finds of colored stones (i.e. prices available near the time of discovery appear surreally low a couple of years after), but no pocket of fancy garnet, tourmaline or whatever could possibly make a wave of the magnitude FWS can. I am afraid that folks like Rau's are simply assuming history will repeat itself.

Well, just IMO. I still am a bit new here and the wake call of 'freshadama' news still feels like a kick in the gut (the good kind).

Perhaps this is really funny, but there has never been advertising of PPB east of Berlin, so no one took care to teach folks around here that those things are pearls at all. I knew natural ones since always, woke up to the apparently crazy concept of 'PPB as pearl' a decade ago too young to care, and started smiling at pearls again with the cute freshwater. Unfortunately, I really am not a typical local and no FWS brand cared to exploit this gap of pearl history.

[hope this ain't too long a confession!]

 

[Caitlin]

I do like your idea of a special site, or section at least, for klonks, one of a kind, oddball, desgned strands, and baroques etc. Maybe even paragons or whatever is the proper name for the pearl designers' completions with gold and other jewels, like your birdies or the mushroom like some one designed on another thread.

 

[Caitlin]

Hi Valeria101
I love your seaches and appreciate your views.

Actually I do collect pictures from some of those sites, but buying form them? I doubt I would even if I won the Lottery! (which I won't becuz I never even bought a ticket!)

I think we are in a window where the best pearls cost the least. We are educatring people through this site, and I already see we are ahead of the curve, riding the crest of the wave, the avant guarde, etc, but it is coming. The day is coming when PPB's will be the choice for those who can't afford CFWP.

So, I have advised several times on this panel: Now is the time to invest in these- especially the freshadamas! They will be worth a fortune in another generation, if not in 5 years.

It is time for the akoya manufacturors to see the writing on the wall and do some tissue only nucleating, at least for their highest quality lines! That also goes for the SS and the Tahitians, but I think they have a lot more time than the akoya guys. Their product is usually of better quality that most akoyas. But I have seen some Tahitians I thought were as pretty as goat droppings, so I know there is some trash out there trying to cash in on the "quality" mystique of the genuine Tahitians.

Here is my first mention of this kind of "goat dropping" Tahitian back in June of this year.
https://www.pearl-guide.com/forum/showthread.php?t=517&highlight=goat+droppings

Since then I have also looked at least ? dozen cheapo ($ 250-1000) Tahitian strands that were ugly. The $1,000 one looked like goat droppings in its color, and had inclusions that looked like pieces of hay and I am not exaggerating. The one for $250 at the Gem Show was also pathetic lackluster black. The ones in between were also ugly, with tails and an obvious bead inside

 

[Valeria101]

So, I have advised several times on this panel: Now is the time to invest in these- especially the freshadamas! They will be worth a fortune in another generation, if not in 5 years.

Hell, I wouldn't know good investment if it run me over (and not just pearls)... at the very least, it is great to have the perfect wave to ride