Can't decide on some GSS pairs...

[yssie]

@michellechan2211 I’m really glad you feel good about your decision, that’s how we consumers all want other consumers to feel!! Please post photos when you get them!!

 

[lissyflo]

@eolian pearls - thank you for registering over here just to make this post. I know that new forums can be a challenge to navigate - reason #1 I lurk but have never posted on The Other Forum!! Welcome to PS!! And your post here meant a lot to me personally

I’ve been active on PS for more than a decade. I spent most of those years in RT, though, the diamond focus forum. I’m pretty new to pearls!

On the diamond side of PS folks embrace the analytics. There’s a long history there. Decades ago diamonds were sold entirely on visuals. Buyers were encouraged to find beauty in natural stones. Perfect matches were deemed unrealistic, and cut quality - all the reasons that a diamond sparkles - was esoteria that consumers should be kept far away from.

The publicly-stated reason was that these were details that would simply confuse consumers. Of course, having consumers remain uneducated served seller’s purposes nicely - no need to strive for excellence in inventory if your customers will never know any better.

PS, the forum itself, was created to help educate consumers. PS was created to create an educated diamond market. For a long time PS was the only place where diamond cutters and diamond sellers who believed that consumers deserved better than that ubiquitous “don’t worry too much, don’t inspect too much, just trust me” could share their expertise, and where consumers who wanted to know more could come - for free! - to learn. The boutique diamond vendors whom PSers frequent know that their customers want the sparkliest stones, and that they might prioritize sparkle - cut quality - to the max within their budgets.

The diamond industry has transformed. The PS forum was one of the primary forces in that transformation. Nowadays diamond cut quality education pages, blogs, and exposes abound. Diamonds are graded by independent and universally-respected authorities, and consumers are widely educated to avoid buying stones without certification - which in turn leads more vendors to send more stones to those grading authorities. Many online vendors have cut quality brackets to sort by, which - in addition to their education pages - leads those vendors to stock up on stones that make their top cut grade. Consumers are demanding photos and evaluation prior to purchase as a matter of course, which leads more vendors to offer good quality photos, videos, and light reflector imaging as part of their default sales motions.

The diamond industry has seen clear evolution: Consumers value education. And educated consumers universally demand more information from their vendors; and educated consumers universally demand a higher quality of diamond.

Pearls aren’t diamonds, of course. With diamonds the rough looks nothing like the faceted finished stone. With a pearl what you see is largely what you get. Maeshori, bleaching, pinking, polishing - they can improve appearance marginally but there’s no concept of “cutting a pearl to create/improve light return”. The critical factors that influence pearl quality - water quality, the amount of time the host oyster is left to grow the pearl, host age, donor age, bead composition, how delicately the grafter does his or her work - those factors have influence only during pearl formation, not afterward.

But despite that difference, I confess that the pearls industry at large often feels like the diamond industry of eras bygone. No independent and globally-respected grading authorities. It’s commonplace for pearl vendors in the wider industry to explain mismatches and imperfections as “simply due to the fact that pearls are natural organic materials”. It’s also commonplace for pearl vendors in the wider industry to encourage consumers to look just past those mismatches and imperfections - the implication that any better than whatever is right here right now is unrealistic is as explicit as an implication can ever be. I’ve run into an awful lot of this sort of thinking in buying my own pearls.

And it’s true. To an extent. But it’s not the universally binding truth that those vendors would have their customers believe.

Better luster is almost always possible - if you’re willing to wait for it and pay for it, and if you’re working with a vendor who understands what you’re asking for and is willing to search for it. A better luster match is almost always possible - if you’re willing to wait for it and pay for it, and if you’re working with a vendor who understands what you’re asking for and is willing to search for it. More saturated colour is almost always possible - if you’re willing to wait for it and pay for it, and if you’re working with a vendor who understands what you’re asking for and is willing to search for it. A better colour match is almost always possible - if you’re willing to wait for it and pay for it, and if you’re working with a vendor who understands what you’re asking for and is willing to search for it. More contrast is almost always possible - if you’re willing to wait for it and pay for it, and if you’re working with a vendor who understands what you’re asking for and is willing to search for it. A better contrast match is almost always possible - if you’re willing to wait for it and pay for it, and if you’re working with a vendor who understands what you’re asking for and is willing to search for it.

Almost always possible. Not always, but almost always.

But most pearls vendors, even those who understand what you’re asking for, aren’t going to be willing to search for it. It’s just not cost-effective for them to do so. I’ll be blunt: It’s much cheaper to stock mediocre inventory and encourage customers not to think too much. I know that because those diamond vendors of those eras bygone did exactly the same thing, before PS came along and upended everything.

PS has always been focused on education, putting trust in the idea that an educated consumer base will, over time, improve quality of the product as a whole without raising prices across the board. Imagine if every person who bought a strand of akoya pearls demanded certification from PSL or PEPCA or GIA or IGI or any number of other independent authorities that haven’t managed to take market share? The average quality of akoya would improve within a decade or two. Retailers would default to stocking a higher quality of pearl. Their suppliers would be incentivised to buy a higher quality of pearl. Farmers would be incentivised to produce more of what the suppliers are buying. Curing the plague would get funding. (I say that… Tongue in cheek). Yes, it would take time. And yes, it would be costly. And then prices would come back down as this new quality bar is normalized. And yes, it would happen just like this. We’ve already watched it happen.

PS, on the diamond side, had always been the one place where tradepeople would credit consumers who choose to participate with being able and willing to learn more. The idea that education would turn a consumer off a purchase-to-be, or spoil a consumer’s purchase-to-be, when that consumer actively solicits help - is a really foreign concept. And on that side of PS it’s frankly insulting to that consumer. PS’ long-proven philosophy is that an educated consumer will make the most mind-clean, most cost-effective decision for his or her budget at this time and for this project. Every single person who buys luxury goods has budgets that are specific to those projects. Those budgets might be wildly different, depending on the project. An educated consumer will know what’s important to him or her, will know what to look for and what isn’t a personal priority… An educated consumer has the tools to make the choice that will make him or her happiest in the long term. An uneducated consumer doesn’t know what to look for, doesn’t know what’s most important to him or her, and may well come to regret his or her choice because it was made without consideration.

I’m no expert.

I’ve never confessed to be one.

And I’m beyond shocked to see tradepeople on PS take objection to anyone providing any sort of education. Tradepeople are the the experts who are supposed to be leading PS community learning!! Every single educational post that I’ve ever shared here on PS - those should have come from tradepeople. That model is what finally dragged the diamond industry into improvement. I hope to see the pearls industry evolve the same way, thanks to The Other Forum, and PS, and whatever other consumer resources are out there. In the meantime I will keep pick-picking as long as it’s useful to other consumers, and I will keep giving other consumers who ask for opinions the courtesy of assuming they’re actually requesting opinions and not presume they’re secretly looking for coddling, and hopefully at some point all tradepeople here on the pearls side of PS will do the same.

And I say again…hear, hear.

Education, education, education. No amount of knowledge will make the heart sing about a purchase that doesn’t please, but better to know stuff and let the heart override knowledge than to buy in ignorance.

 

[LLJsmom]

@yssie you are a god. (Lower case g so as not to be blasphemous.). I’ve been listening to too many teen Greek mythology fiction.

But that’s what I wanted to pop in and say. Will come back and read more carefully when I’m out of busy season.
Have fun on this thread people. I don’t have any pearls on my list now but I will still devour this thread when I have the time.

 

[michellechan2211]

@michellechan2211 I’m really glad you feel good about your decision, that’s how we consumers all want other consumers to feel!! Please post photos when you get them!!

Of course! i don't expect it to be fast but i will share when they arrive.

 

[michellechan2211]

They have arrived!



And here they are posing in a gift box:



They are very nice to my eyes and I'm sure the recipient will be very pleased with them

 

[yssie]

Congrats!!!

Seriously lucky recipient - hand-chosen pearls straight from Japan - this sure as heck ain’t #OffTheShelf