Pearl education

Pearl guides

Thirty years of buying, on farms and at auction, written down properly. Start with the type you are interested in, or with the question you actually have.

Pearls are harder to buy than any other gem. There is no universal grading report, no independent body whose word settles it, and no standard vocabulary between sellers. Two strands can be described in exactly the same words and be worth ten times different.

These pages are written to close that gap. They are the same explanations I would give you across a table, and every photograph and every piece of film on them is ours. Nothing here is stock.

~ Jeremy Shepherd, Founder and CEO of Pearl Paradise

Four strands of pearls held in one hand: two Tahitian in dark grays and greens, one white South Sea and one golden South Sea, running diagonally across a pale ground
Four strands · two Tahitian, one white South Sea and one golden South Sea

Start here

By pearl type

Nearly every question about pearls has a different answer depending on the type, so this is the first thing to settle. Four species produce almost everything sold, but you will see six names on a price tag, because two of those species each divide into two varieties that behave like separate pearls in the market.

Akoya pearls The classic white strand, grown in Japan. Sharp mirror luster, refined sizes, and a supply story that has moved prices sharply in recent years. Freshwater pearls The widest category in the world, from a few dollars to strands that compete directly with saltwater. Grown in mussels, with and without a bead. Golden South Sea pearls From the gold-lipped variety of Pinctada maxima. The most valuable cultured pearls grown, and why saturation drives the price so steeply. White South Sea pearls From the silver-lipped variety of the same species. The largest saltwater pearls, thick nacre, satiny luster, and the top of the market. Tahitian pearls Naturally dark pearls from French Polynesia, grown in the cumingii variety of the black-lipped oyster. Why bodycolor and overtone are two different things. Fijian pearls The typica variety of the same black-lipped oyster, farmed in Fiji. Warmer color running to gold, bronze and green, in small production. All the types compared Which mollusk, which water, which country, and every size shown against every other at true scale in one photograph.

Before you buy

Judging and pricing

What a pearl is worth, why two that look alike are not, and what a stated grade does and does not tell you.

Pearl prices What each type actually sells for, which pearls are the most expensive and why, and what a pearl found in an oyster is really worth. How pearls are graded What A through AAA means, how the systems differ between types, and why a grade from one seller cannot be compared with a grade from another. Judging pearl quality The seven factors, in the order I use them at a buying table. Luster first, by a distance, and matching last but rarely least. Pearl colors Which colors occur naturally in each type, what bodycolor, overtone, tone and orient actually mean, and how to tell natural color from dyed. Natural blue pearls Where the color comes from, the three different ways a pearl ends up blue, and the one thing that separates a fine blue baroque from a poor one.

Choosing a piece

Necklaces, sizes and lengths

Choosing a pearl necklace What matters, in the order it matters. Type, size shown at true scale, length, and whether the strand is knotted. Necklace lengths Collar, choker, princess, matinee, opera and rope, and how each one sits depending on height and neckline.

After you buy

Looking after them

Caring for pearls What actually damages nacre and why, how care differs across the four types, and the short list of things never to do. Ultrasonic cleaners are first on it.
A man crouched at the edge of a raceway lifting a mesh panel of freshwater mussels out of the water at a pearl farm
Lifting mussels at a freshwater pearl farm on Lake Kasumigaura, Japan

If you would rather ask

Nothing here beats holding them

Every page in this section exists because pearls take some explaining. If you have a question these do not answer, or you want to see something in person or over video, we would rather talk to you than have you guess.

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