South Sea pearls - opinions on quality please?

[cookierookie]

 

[cookierookie]

Hi guys, my name is Val, i'm new to this forum. Just not too long ago, we purchased this lot from Indonesia. they are cultured SSPs, and have not gone through any kind of processing, not even the tumbling with shells/corn chips.

 

[Sutrisno]

I am definitely not an expert. So : WOW?

 

[cookierookie]

Hi Sutrisno, thanks!! i saw your reply on another thread, are you indonesian?

 

[Sutrisno]

Hello Valerene,

Yes, I am an Indonesian aquaculturirst, and you come from the Philippines? May I ask where did you manage to purchase those fine looking SSPs? I know quite a few farmers and what you have is very much better than the pearls they harvest, plenty of very smooth looking rounds. Or then again, usually I see them before it is all graded and see plenty of what they say cheap pearls.

 

[KarinK]

A completely non-qualified opinion, Val - they look amazing to my eyes

- Karin

 

[jshepherd]

It's not easy to tell from the pictures, but it appears to be the rounds and semi-rounds pulled from a lot. It is a mixed lot, both on color and quality. I'd only suggest considering them if you are able to deal with the producer face to face and/or you can take possession of the lot prior to committing. If done by email, you have no idea what you might receive.

 

[Caitlin]

You seem to know what you are doing, but I always follow Jeremy's advice on such things!

I visited your site. some great stuff,very high quality if I am seeing correctly, but no prices and also the photos tend to be washed out- especially for what I think the prices must be. Especially the large baroque freshwater. I hope you do put up improved photos. I can't even tell if I would be interested in that freshwater- I really want to see some of the colors, let alone overtones.

For all your colors to be natural, I guess not even your akoyas go through Japan then. Where do you source akoyas from? And how do you get Freshwater pearls from farms?

Sorry to sound picky, but you seem to be on the crest of the un-processed pearls wave- and you should be very much liked by those who like the idea of no pre-treatments like maeshori, no treatments, and no post-treatment treatments. I would be in favor of you increasing your credibility with us, for starters.

I know that when we praise and/or recommend someone here- or a product, like those metallic white freshwaters Jeremy had (has?) for instance, they sell off the shelves very quickly.

Who designs your pieces?

I hope you will use your blog, if not P-G.com to tell us how you choose your farmers and your pearls and how you know they haven't been treated. Posts like that would, no doubt, increase your customer base and make you seem accessible to answer those picky questions. And the photos of those far away places....sigh........And take photos of those pearls coming out of the shells, or of the farms, even if you do not give names and locations......

Please let us know as you get get better photos up. I have a qualified liking for your site and your pearls and hope to see more.

 

[cookierookie]

Hi everyone!

Thank you so much for the kind words and feedback! I really appreciate it.

Sutrisno: Thanks for saying it looks good! it was a mixed lot of grade A to C, but with really nice lustre

Karin: Thank you you have been very nice and encouraging!

Jeremy: You are really observant! Yes it was a mixed lot of whites, champagnes and gold, majority were white, i just mixed them up for photo purposes. The photos were taken with just a normal digital camera, under normal daylight. there were rounds, off-rounds, teardrops, ovals and a few semi-baroques in this lot.

Caitlin:

Thanks for being such a good moderator. I've been reading pearl-guide since 2008 and have always loved this site. So informative...i'm sorry about our website, it's quite outdated and requires a good update I really need to figure out how to do it, esp with the pictures. Those batch of pictures were taken quite some time ago in a white box, and it was our first time doing a product shoot, and our photographer (we got a friend) wasn't too familiar with photographing pearls. So in the white box the lighting became too strong and instead of showing off the pearls' luster, basically it washed out the pearls and they couldn't really be salvaged even with photoshop. We didn't use anymore flash with the camera but it still came out like that. I'll definitely look into posting more photos soon, and focusing only on SSPs.

At the moment we are focusing solely on SSPs and Tahitian pearls, not really touching akoyas at the moment...because we're thinking that prices might drop very soon because china seems to be catching up really fast with Japan.

I'm actually not all that against treatments such as maeshori, though i'm not a big fan of dyeing...I guess from a consumer standpoint as well, and after being cheated sooooo many times in the past, i am really all for ethical business practices, big on disclosure, disclosure, disclosure I was very surprised that even this time when I was in HK one of the vendors even tried to lie about their golden SSP strands. they told me they were natural but i inspected it and right there, in the drill holes was a lot of dye

 

[KarinK]

Hi Val,

We have a whole thread about photographing pearls for professional purposes. It might give you some help about what to do.

- Karin

 

[cookierookie]

Hi Val,

We have a whole thread about photographing pearls for professional purposes. It might give you some help about what to do.

- Karin

I didn't know that! thanks for the tip! I shall look it up

 

[pattye]

Val,
Welcome and thank you for sharing your story. Good to know you've put knowledge from the forum to good use. The baroques especially appeal to me.

 

[lisa c]

Hi Val,

We have a whole thread about photographing pearls for professional purposes. It might give you some help about what to do.

- Karin

Taking pictures of pearl jewellery is the thread

Your description "this lot are mostly baby SS pearls" rang a bell and I hope you'll clarify how you're using 'baby SS pearls'. That description came up in the thread SSP Phillipines. Baby SSPearl is mentioned as a seller's way to pass off Chinese CFW pearls as South Sea pearls, explained in post #23. So, the description makes me uneasy enough to bring it to your attention, since it's a negative association.

Just saying, I won't be the only one with this memory so you should be aware.

 

[Caitlin]

Valerene your kind of story is a delight to hear! I wish you the best of luck and please let us know when you get on top of the photography. and, please keep posting photos!

 

[cookierookie]

Taking pictures of pearl jewellery is the thread

Your description "this lot are mostly baby SS pearls" rang a bell and I hope you'll clarify how you're using 'baby SS pearls'. That description came up in the thread SSP Phillipines. Baby SSPearl is mentioned as a seller's way to pass off Chinese CFW pearls as South Sea pearls, explained in post #23. So, the description makes me uneasy enough to bring it to your attention, since it's a negative association.

Just saying, I won't be the only one with this memory so you should be aware.

Hi Lisa,

LOL. I would never try to pass off FW pearls as SS. These baby/small SSPs were specially requested because the Australian market prefers them for earrings. In the Philippines it is an entirely different story, they just want big, big, big pearls, 15mm even if it's meant for their ears.

This lot were mostly 9.5mm pearls, but the sizes ranged from 7.5mm all the way to 14mm.

But you are right, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify what my baby SSPs are. One of the huge challenges I face here in Manila is re-educating people. A lot of people here think that Greenhills pearl market is THE place to buy pearls. it isn't. it's just a place for people to get cheated most of the time. I know I did. Maybe for freshwaters Greenhills might be an OK place, but definitely not for SS. Most of the pearls there are treated, and I would say, not well-treated. They will tell you it comes from Mindanao, Palawan (for the SS), and some of it MIGHT be true as there are some experimental farms around the Philippines. But most of these vendors in GH get their stock in HK, buying low quality leftovers from the fair (I have been told that a lot of them are not granted access to the HK Fair), and sometimes they are even stolen pearls from actual commercial pearl farms in the Philippines.

I did try doing business with the pearl vendors in GH, I won't give any price of pearls they were asking me to source, but at the budget they wanted (it made me chuckle), there was really NO WAY i could even find anything decent. When I told them that that price is for something that is treated, they did not care and told me that "people will still buy", "they don't complain", and the margins they make from the price they wanted...was just unjustified. I'm not discounting that there are some good vendors in GH. Some. and i'm not saying all GH vendors are all bad. Some of them might not as be as educated in pearls (but trying to be in the business), so I would not be surprised if some of them get cheated in HK too.

This is a challenge that will continue for the next few years I think! I'm starting to hold some small talks on pearls just to get the process started. I won't be saying bad things about GH...I believe in "live and let live", but the talks would really open a consumer's eyes to pearls, something desperately needed here

 

[Katbran]

Well they look lovely and I wish you lots of luck. I did visit your website and certainly agree that it very much needs an update. Do you sell strands or only finished jewelry? It wasn't clear to me when I looked.

 

[cookierookie]

Well they look lovely and I wish you lots of luck. I did visit your website and certainly agree that it very much needs an update. Do you sell strands or only finished jewelry? It wasn't clear to me when I looked.

Hi Katbran,

Thank you! We sell both. We can do wholesale of finished products if the customer so requires. Our pearls are loose when we get them, and we match them ourselves into pairs, strands etc.

 

[lisa c]

Thank you for taking my post in the spirit in which it was intended.

Good luck with your educational meeting plans. From small acorns mighty oaks grow!

 

[Marianne]

I believe the need for educating consumers about pearls knows no borders. Good wishes to you Valerene and best of luck!

 

[perlinda]

Hi Valerene, that seems to be a nice lot you got there!
May I ask why you import pearls from Indonesia while you are in a land of pearls of yourself?

Here in Indonesia, many big farmers focus on exporting only, and sell the rejects to local market. So, finding high quality pearl for good price isn't very easy for me. Is that the same to you in Philippines?