St. Barths

[Betty Blythe]

Just returned from St. Barths French West Indies and visited with owner of the shop Bijoux De La Mer . Always has beautiful Tahitian pearls. She had round 17mm peacock pearls to make necklaces. They were lovely and I saw few if any flaws--great luster. The price was 2,000.00 per pearl. I want to ask your help--is this a "brick and morter" price or was this a fair price for pearls of this quality? I was rather astounded

 

[jshepherd]

What I would consider 17 mm peacock of fine quality (A/B) cannot be purchased wholesale for double that. Either she would have had really old stock and doesn't know what it's worth, or something else is amiss - owning a pearl shop, it would have to be the latter. I am guessing they were in the C and below surface quality range, which could be possible.

 

[Betty Blythe]

17mm pearls

17mm pearls

Thanks She is known as a "high end" pearl shop. I could see almost no flaws on the pearls. The colors were beautiful I was confused

 

[jshepherd]

17 mm would most often mean 17-18 mm. This is a big differentiator. The pearls are either 16-17 mm, or 17-18 mm. They can't be just 17 mm. A clean, round peacock with high luster in the 16-17 mm range would sell (wholesale) for somewhere between $5k to $10k and likely even more. A 17-18 mm of the same grade would go to the highest bidder; think well over $20,000 for a single pearl. You mentioned pearls (plural) to make necklaces (plural) and that simply doesn't exist anywhere except in a certain quality range.

I hope Josh (the resident Tahitian pearl farmer might chime in here), but I don't know if his farm has ever succeeded in growing a single 17-18 mm, clean, round peacock with high luster. They are museum pieces and center pieces of $100,000+ strands.

 

[Betty Blythe]

She had many of this size and was making a necklace for someone. She is on line at www.bijouxdelamerstbarths.com. She told me she goes to French Polynesia (one of the pearl farms) once a year. Yes something is amiss. I wish I knew

 

[Marianne]

It would be nice if the website had close photos of the actual pearls for sale and information. You must have had a lovely vacation!

 

[GemGeek]

That just doesn't make sense. Even if they were dyed freshwaters, that is a very large size. Ah, the mystery!