There is quite a variety of pearls in Greenhills, but 90% or more of the merchandise are from China. It is also important to have some basic knowledge of pearls (or know exactly what you are looking for) since most sellers take a lot of liberties in presenting the goods that they sell like "natural" and "quality". The most common misrepresentation is "baby south sea" for larger freshwater pearls. You also get a wide palette of colored FWPs and they say that the coloration is natural. I also see a lot of dyed south sea pearls that I suspect are low quality silver/gray SSPs that are dyed black, waxed and polished, and they pass them off as Tahitian or simply black SSPs. They would also pass of Chinese akoyas for "Mikimoto" pearls.
When you know what you are buying, you can get reasonable prices; but do not expect to make a killing since the Greenhills sellers are retail sellers who get their stuff from secondary sellers. They do not source their stuff directly from the producers. The FWPs come from China. These are sourced from the "barter trade" in the south (via Malaysia) and from Shanghai and Hong Kong suppliers. The Tahitians and SSPs mainly come from sellers in Hong Kong. The SSPs are a mixed of Australian, Indonesian and Philippine pearls.
I can't believe how little I knew then - and how much fun it turned out to be. You did pretty good. You'll do even better in the future 
