Hi Salana,
As loose, unstrung pearls not. Even if you paid substantial amounts some time ago, the nature of the business is that when you try to sell it again, the price plunges. Take this as an example: I recently inherited some jewelry from my mother in law who had a very conservative taste. That means she bought jewelry for the perceived value of the materials. In the particular case I am discussing here, she had a 2.2ct fancy oval cut diamond solitaire (independently rated SI 1, G color) in a plain setting. She paid US$16,000.00 for that thing about 4 years ago. My husband wanted to see what it will fetch now. I told him that she probably overpaid by US$ 4,000.00 because it was a fancy cut and custom set. So the retail value of the stone was only US$ 12,000.00. To arrive at a wholesale ballpark you have to divide that by 3 (so-called triple keystone) = US$ 4,000.00. To get a jeweler to buy it back from you, you have to make do with half of that. That means the sell-back value is a mere US$ 2,000.00. To test this proposition, we went to a jewelry buyer in our home town in Fresno and that was exactly what he offered. So much on the subject of "investment" jewelry, even the "surefire" diamond solitaire.
If you have a truly unusual piece, though, there may be an active collectors' market. Although there is no collectors' market for average diamonds, there is one for unusual pearls. Baroque akoyas are now rarer than before because most akoyas are not cultured for long enough to grow significantly baroque. However, your standard jewelry buyer wants their akoyas round. The whole point of the bead implant is to get more round pearls and a baroque pearl defeats that purpose.
As such, you have to find somebody who is explicitly looking for baroque akoyas of natural color or restring them into an interesting and unique design that appeals to collectors of unusual pieces.
Zeide
:confused I have had these for a very long time, they used to be a necklace, which came unstrung. They are odd, they are ugly in shape but yet, pretty at the same time.
