My 2022 Sea of Cortez storytime :-)

[yssie]

@CMN Thank you

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@Slickk Thank you!!

So there were three in particular that I fell for the other two though, ’ve already got Cortez pearls with those colours. Not exactly those shapes, and not specifically those colour distributions (if I’m honest I liked the shapes and colour distributions of those two 2022 newbies more than my own!) but… Hard to justify, even for myself, and I'm really good at justifying bling to myself The blue was an easy winnerfor me because it was totally different from anything that I already had. And then I learnt that it was actually the dearest of the whole dang lot, and that put a real quick end to any more wanderlust!!

I’m just very very glad I randomly decided to email Fernando ahead of time And I'm super super excited that one of those other little loves is going to a friend!!

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Thank you @dk168!!

 

[yssie]

@Ann Thank you!! And yes!! Tons of space for more rabbits down here!!

They got some really amazing pearls this year. I feel like this has been the best year since I’ve been following them, at least for people who want bright colours more than anything else! Wish I could share some of the other pearls But in all seriousness, if there’s something you might be interested in - definitely send them a note whilst inventory is maxed out!!

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@Begonia Thank you!!

 

[yssie]

@icy_jade Thank you so much And my pleasure!! (Like, for real, it's a legit pleasure to take photos of these gals )

A friend once described these as "silver nailpolish with metallic colours". Their magic is definitely in their overtone! And from that perspective IMO they do a very reasonable job of holding overtone in non-ideal lighting environments - I don't expect any pearls to hold onto overtone in super bright sunlight so *any* variance is welcome!!

The farm describes the fluor as red, but honestly to me it always looks more "pink" - like, cool rather than warm. And since most of the pearls also lean cooler on iridescence colours it works out better than red that way!

Yeah... Your Ts raise the bar, you're pretty well stuck, no more bargain pearls for you ever again

 

[yssie]

@yssie I wish you'd write a book: the 101 on how to buy pearls. The 'cloudy' photos are mouth-watering. I spent all summer going back to the same CMW Tahitian pearls over and over (they were circles and a mix of yellow/blondish with some cherry pearls thrown in). My plan, since they were lovely and bright, was that they would have been specifically for bright, sunny, short-sleeved days. But never having seen Tahitians in real life and all the grief that comes with an overseas non-refundable sale, by the time I was ready to pull the trigger they were gone. But the up-thread comment about Tahitians being for cloudy days make me wonder if I would have been disappointed. Your pictures and commentary are enjoyable, entertaining and educational.

You are so super super sweet, thank you

And I totally agree with @icy_jade, there are terrific summer Tahitians!!

So here's my opinon. I tend to like pearls with magical overtones, and I don't (normally) care about body colour so much. Those types of pearls can be gorgeous in diffuse lighting environments - like in the shade or on cloudy days - but they basically never do great in bright direct sunlight.

There's another type of Tahitian, I owned this type once upon a time. Sold it a while ago so I'll just link the thread. And icy has a bubble strand like this. Where the body colour itself is super strong. Those pearls often - not always, but usually - have less strong/contrasty/multi-coloured overtones, though, so there's generally a tradeoff... But since they aren't actually relying on overtones to look amazing they do *great* in bright sunlight (that'd wash overtones out)!! IMO this is the Fiji pearl story - super strong body, overtone is a tertiary concern. (Fiji pearl oysters are black-lipped pearl oysters, same species that other Tahitians come from, but they've evolved to be smaller and prob some other localized traits too). They're lovely in the sun. I've not seen any Cortez pearls that have strong enough body colour to really hold up to sunlight but I've seen an admittedly limited number of Cortez pearls

Pearls with both strong body colour and strong contrasting overtone are so special!! They're so hard to find though, I don't know how you'd go about getting enough for even a bracelet

https://www.pricescope.com/communit...5mm-from-cees-newly-strung-never-worn.260904/

So I guess the short response would have been "nah no disappointment guarantees"

 

[yssie]

Icy’s wave (not “bubble”, my mistake!) Tahitian strand - the one I was referring to in my last post - on Pg 5 of this thread
https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/so-i-bought-some-new-stuff.208129/page-5#post-3797207

 

[Catmom]

Thank you so much for this thread and I am just dying over that bracelet. So amazingly beautiful, I just can't.........

 

[icy_jade]

Icy’s wave (not “bubble”, my mistake!) Tahitian strand - the one I was referring to in my last post - on Pg 5 of this thread
https://www.pricescope.com/community/threads/so-i-bought-some-new-stuff.208129/page-5#post-3797207

I think you may know what I have better than I can recall…

 

[Tartansparkles]

You are so super super sweet, thank you

And I totally agree with @icy_jade, there are terrific summer Tahitians!!

So here's my opinon. I tend to like pearls with magical overtones, and I don't (normally) care about body colour so much. Those types of pearls can be gorgeous in diffuse lighting environments - like in the shade or on cloudy days - but they basically never do great in bright direct sunlight.

There's another type of Tahitian, I owned this type once upon a time. Sold it a while ago so I'll just link the thread. And icy has a bubble strand like this. Where the body colour itself is super strong. Those pearls often - not always, but usually - have less strong/contrasty/multi-coloured overtones, though, so there's generally a tradeoff... But since they aren't actually relying on overtones to look amazing they do *great* in bright sunlight (that'd wash overtones out)!! IMO this is the Fiji pearl story - super strong body, overtone is a tertiary concern. (Fiji pearl oysters are black-lipped pearl oysters, same species that other Tahitians come from, but they've evolved to be smaller and prob some other localized traits too). They're lovely in the sun. I've not seen any Cortez pearls that have strong enough body colour to really hold up to sunlight but I've seen an admittedly limited number of Cortez pearls

Pearls with both strong body colour and strong contrasting overtone are so special!! They're so hard to find though, I don't know how you'd go about getting enough for even a bracelet

https://www.pricescope.com/communit...5mm-from-cees-newly-strung-never-worn.260904/

So I guess the short response would have been "nah no disappointment guarantees"

I think this backs up my earlier suggestion of writing a book

Can I ask where you gained all your pearl knowledge. I think I saw you mention once about reading a paper, are there academic research papers on pearls or is it an accumulation of knowledge over the years?

 

[yssie]

I don’t know about that but I do love chatting with vendors!! They have so much real-world experience!!

And there are some really good papers out there - here are two that I keep going back to:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-94737-w#Fig1
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-99327-4.pdf?proof=t+target=

 

[yssie]

Couple more nuggets about the 2020 loose pearl harvest


Of the ~4000 total pearls, ~77% were from lab oysters and ~23% from wild spat that was collected and grown.

The farm isn't sure why the natural oysters did so poorly, other than it wasn't heat (the hottest years were 2014 and 2015 and they did fine those years). It's very fortunate that the lab babies were ready for harvest the year they were needed most!!


The 2022 mabe harvest began middle of June. None of the mabe come from lab oysters, and as of now the farm has no plans to change that. Apparently the oysters creating loose pearls can be a bit finicky and unpredictable, but the mabe hosts always do very well, so adding labs to the mabe rearing numbers wouldn't improve anything!