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Explain to me like I'm a kindergartner

Mrs_Strizzle

Mrs_Strizzle

Brilliant_Rock
Joined
Jun 14, 2018
Messages
1,645
I know absolutely nothing about pearls, as I honestly thought of them as kind of boring up until very recently. I know now it is because 99% of all the pearls I've ever seen irl were either fake or of low quality. My mind was blown when I saw some extremely beautiful pearls recently, and I want to learn more. I found Takahashi on Instagram and they have a recent post with this image discussing luster. It says the highest quality is on the top and descends down. Can y'all put in your own words how you describe the differences? I do see differences, but want it to really soak in my thick skull. Thanks!
 

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I will not put this as clearly as some of our pearl experts, but I can explain the way I see the differences:

The pearl on top has noticeably sharper reflections from the camera, other objects in the room, etc. The shapes of the shadows/reflections dont look "blurry" or "soft" like they do in the bottom 2 pearls. Also, the contrast itself (between light and dark reflections) is much sharper and more obvious in the top 1 than the others. Finally, the pearl itself looks shiny-er (is that even a word??)
 
lovedogs said:
I will not put this as clearly as some of our pearl experts, but I can explain the way I see the differences:

The pearl on top has noticeably sharper reflections from the camera, other objects in the room, etc. The shapes of the shadows/reflections dont look "blurry" or "soft" like they do in the bottom 2 pearls. Also, the contrast itself (between light and dark reflections) is much sharper and more obvious in the top 1 than the others. Finally, the pearl itself looks shiny-er (is that even a word??)
Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to explain all this. I definitely see what you are saying and it confirmed what I thought I should be looking for when looking at images of pearls (buying online, most likely).
 
I also should have said that the top 2 pearls both look very nice. Tje bottom 2 are noticeably less good to my eyes, but I wouldnt kick the 2nd one out of bed haha
 
Mrs_Strizzle said:
I know absolutely nothing about pearls, as I honestly thought of them as kind of boring up until very recently. I know now it is because 99% of all the pearls I've ever seen irl were either fake or of low quality. My mind was blown when I saw some extremely beautiful pearls recently, and I want to learn more. I found Takahashi on Instagram and they have a recent post with this image discussing luster. It says the highest quality is on the top and descends down. Can y'all put in your own words how you describe the differences? I do see differences, but want it to really soak in my thick skull. Thanks!
Click to expand...

the first ones make my heart beat so fast and then i stop breathing
 
There is a course offered by the CPAA called "Pearls As One". It's loaded with great information, photos and videos.
There are codes to take it for free. One of the free codes I've seen is JOTT (provided by Jewels of the Trade channel on YouTube.

This is the course website: Pearls As One course offered by CPAA

If you really want to learn about pearls, this course will teach you more than you are likely to learn from almost any other source!
 
pearlsngems said:
There is a course offered by the CPAA called "Pearls As One". It's loaded with great information, photos and videos.
There are codes to take it for free. One of the free codes I've seen is JOTT (provided by Jewels of the Trade channel on YouTube.

This is the course website: Pearls As One course offered by CPAA

If you really want to learn about pearls, this course will teach you more than you are likely to learn from almost any other source!
Click to expand...

Thanks so much for the info! I am definitely going to check this out as my divergent brain tends to obsess on new topics :geek:
 
What do you see @Mrs_Strizzle?

Please share your thoughts with us! I was also very meh about pearls until I saw a photo of a spectacular strand, and knew I had to see This Sort Of Gem with my own eyes.

I'm curious what you think of those three pearls - how you would describe any difference you see?
 
empliau said:
I found this post from Andrew Moline very informative. He is very clear about the differences in the grades of Akoya pearls:

Click to expand...

I was just about to post this!

I'm going to add one more post from Andrew, which shows how grades from one vendor do not necessarily correlate to grades from another. Think about grades as being a within-vendor comparison rather than a between-vendor comparison.

 
Pretty much what many have said, but just to say:

Pearls have no universal grading system. What one place calls "meh grade" the same pearls might be "AAAAA++++omg grade" at a different place. As has been said, consider grades as labels within vendors. Any grade at any place, just like with diamonds, is going to be a range/some variance, no matter how strict it is.

Pearls are extremely difficult to light correctly in a way that both does high quality examples justice but also doesn't overly enhance certain quality aspects.

Some quality factors are more subjective than others and they all contribute to a pearl. Luster (the brightness, sharpness, and how easy to identify reflections) is generally king in any pearls, but at the same time, one probably doesn't want a pearl that is super high luster but has lots of noticeably deep gashes and pits all over it. Many times and particularly in south sea types, flawless pearls with "still good" luster are more expensive than higher luster not as clean pearls.

The other issue with this, which is fairly prevalent, is when there's no objective best way to look at pearls, it can leave descriptors you'll find like "top quality" a little ambiguous. Does this mean the top quality that the vendor has on hand at the moment? The top quality that the vendor could possibly have access to? The top quality that can exist in pearls whether or not the vendor has access to it? The top quality that was available in a particular year's harvest or that is reasonably and currently available overall? This is just one example and none of these are necessarily problematic and certainly not wrong, but it's good to know wherever one is finding pearls how these sorts of factors and descriptors are considered.

All that is to say there's not one universal way of looking at pearls that is necessarily the "One and Only Way" of doing about it. I always encourage in the end, as with all jewelry, diamonds, or gemstones, it's important that you find someone you trust to work with, wherever they are and who doesn't mind if you have questions, if you want to ask them!
 
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