Here is a bit of metallics history from PG!
nnguye, you asked if they were called metallic freshadama. No. They were not using the term "metallic" then. They were called "fancy freshwater pearls" and "exotics". These were a very limited quantity special offer from PP back in Feb.
2008, the link being sent to people who asked to be on the mailing list for them, and a few more strands became available later the same year for people who had missed out the first time around.
The "Exotics" were more colorful and metallic than any FWP we had seen until then. Some were round, many were oval or drops. I have 2 of the oval/drops strands that I am about to restring together to make one long strand.
Edit: This is what I ended up doing with the 2 oval strands-- a double strand, instead of a rope:
Here is a PP photo Jeremy posted back then. They were remarkable! And sold out fast. I think they were just about gone in 15 minutes flat.
And another of Jeremy's photos-- the first horizontal strand near the top is my strand, with the gold pearl.
If you go way back in the Show Us Your Pearls forum to pages from 2008 you can find threads about these pearls. Look for threads with "Exotic" or "Exotics" in the title (you can do Advanced Search for this, searching titles only.) Unfortunately back then many people were linking to Photobucket instead of uploading their photos to PG directly, so many photos were lost in time. But there are still some photos.
Then in
2009 Jeremy got a bunch of eight-way rollers -- truly round naturally colored FWP-- that were
really metallic. Even more metallic than the 2008 pearls. This is the first time I recall FW pearls being called "metallics". I didn't buy any, as I had that round strand I already loved, but I'm sure some PG folks have strands. Here is a thread with a few photos of one member's strand:
My metallic FWP from PP is here!!!
And earrings, in larger sizes:
Exotic Metallic Freshwater Earrings
Then in 2011 there were the color-shifting metallic pearls. As I recall Jeremy and I think Mia spent a LOT of time going through
buckets of loose pearls to find the color-shifting ones. A true gift of their time.
The color-shifting freshwaters have arrived!
PP Metallic color-shifts
And of course after that the white FW metallics came, in 2012. It seems to me there were always more colored metallics available than white strands.
To me what is cool about all these older fancy/exotic/metallic pearls is that they were solid nacre. Time marched on, and now they are producing in-body bead nucleated FWP such as Edisons, which are also very cool in their own way. The roundness, the size, the colors...wonderful!
Anyway, I hope you like the eye candy, and also I hope people post their old strands from Way Back Then! Especially as so many of the old photos on Photobucket were lost.