Agreed on the Edison prices. just silly. Pricing like that makes it very clear you can slap any old price on an item but it is only the item's value when someone will pay it. Those high priced strands weren't even super-special. Very nice yes, rich colour, pretty clean and shiny but special...no. Grace has cut prices on a lot of stock this time around - a lot of the good colour ripple strands were really cut in price from around $1k (too high) to down to $300 which is what everyone else charges for comparable. Grace had trays and trays of the ear-wax dyed 'gold south seas' too- as you can see from Katbran's photos (thanks for them)
There were no strands of the distinctive raspberry purples like the ones I treated myself to 18 months ago. That really does seem to have been a one-off colour from that harvest (smug mode)
I've been meaning to write a conclusion entry in my blog to round up the show for this time...
There's nothing new - like bead nucleated or souffles (very rare now though selling to India!) on the horizon.
Prices are volatile, top quality prices are up while medium are down
Best seller for most sellers is high quality white rounds
Singles prices are very high
There are very few large size dyed black or natural colour singles around
Tahitian and south sea prices are falling, for less than top quality.
Funnily enough there is hardly any dyed coloured stock to be found. Any that is has probably been hanging around for years.
For me, attending isn't so much about saving money..agreed, you don't..but about being able to select only the very very very best - for example, ten pairs of white 10mm drops, super metallic, from a huge tub of pretty much all clean and metallic pearls. Or the incandescent blue of a single natural colour akoya.
