– Australia: home to some of the finest quality pearls in the world, with a variety of colors ranging from white to black. The Australian pearl industry is worth an estimated $500 million per year.
Japan is the acknowledged leader in Akoya pearl production – known to produce the best, most consistently beautiful Akoya pearls in the world.
The Australian South Sea Pearls are the Jewels of the Ocean and are the rarest and most highly prized pearls in the world. They are known as the Queen of Pearls. At Cosmopolitan Jeweller, one of the leading South Sea Pearl stores in Sydney, Australia.
South Sea Pearls
Found in Indonesia, the Philippines and northern Australia these pearls are the largest of all pearl types. Southsea pearls come in a variety of shapes, all of which are extremely valuable but the most highly sought after have the deepest golden colour and are perfectly round .
The AAA-A System
This grading system ranks pearls from AAA to A, with AAA being the highest.
Hyderabad is known as the City of Pearls. This was due to its booming pearl processing and trading industry that has been supplying the finest pearl jewellery to India and the rest of the world for more than 400 years.
Australian South Sea Pearls are widely regarded as the most valuable Pearls in the world due to their size, lustre and scarcity.
The luster of good quality pearls is sharp and bright. You should be able to see your reflection clearly on the surface of a pearl. Any pearl that appears too white, dull or chalky, is of low quality. Within a pearl type, when other value factors are equal, the higher the luster, the more valuable the pearl.
South Sea. South Sea pearls are often referred to as the Rolls Royce of pearls. They are the largest and most valuable pearls grown today, with average sizes ranging from 10 to 15 millimeters. South Sea pearls grow in a large pearl oyster native to Australia, the Philippines, Myanmar and Indonesia.
The lip determines the pearl color. While the white pearls are also priced by jewelers, the gold pearl variety is the most coveted color. The gold South sea pearl's color can range from creamy white to deep gold, and the darker the color, the more expensive it becomes.
Gold Pearls
One of the largest and rarest pearls found around the world is Gold in color. They are Golden South Sea pearls, cultured in the Philippine Islands. Golden South Sea pearls have only been available to pearl lovers since the late 1970s, and are known as the “Rolls Royce” of cultured pearls.
The most classic and widely preferred pearl color is white. The white pearl is considered a symbol of purity, and is often associated with wedding and graduation celebrations.
The recent global economic crisis had a large effect on the Chinese pearl industry. The overproduction of low-quality freshwater cultured pearls coupled with low demand and spiralling prices for these pearls, has meant that many pearl farmers could no longer cover their production costs.
A natural pearl may show growth lines where concentric layers of nacre have been added. Cultured pearls on the other hand will appear to have a perfectly rounded nucleus that's surrounded by a halo of conchiolin and finally a thin outer layer.
The richest oyster beds are around the town of Broome, Western Australia, 2000 kilometres north of Perth, 1500 kilometres south of Darwin. South Sea Pearls are often referred to as Broome Pearls or Australian Pearls for this reason.
A traditional strand of white pearls can range from $100 (Freshwater pearl necklace) to $10,000 (Akoya pearl necklace). A strand of large, flawless South Sea pearls could even be valued as high as $100,000+ . The truth is there is no simple answer to the question “how much are pearls worth” is…
Luster: Of the seven pearl value factors, luster might be the most important. Luster is what gives a natural or cultured pearl its unique beauty. Within a pearl type, when other value factors are equal, the higher the luster, the more valuable the pearl.
The Australian South Sea pearl oyster (Pinctada maxima) is the largest and rarest of all pearl oysters and produces the largest and most valuable of all pearls.
Because South Sea Pearls form over longer periods of time, they are more costly to cultivate. For this reason, there are a limited number of South Sea pearl farms, making the truly prized South Seas exceptionally rare. Not all cultured pearls are good enough to become Assael pearls.
Broome: 'the pearling capital of the world'
In the 1880s pearlers turned their sights to Roebuck Bay (Broome) in the West Kimberley. By 1910 Broome was the largest pearling centre in the world, benefitting from newly introduced diving suits, fertile waters and a booming international pearl button market.
Bahrain, an island nation in the Persian Gulf lying between both the Qatar peninsula and the Saudi Arabian eastern coast, is known as the "Island of Pearls."
The Pearl of Puerto, the Giga Pearl, and the Pearl of Lao Tzu (Pearl of Allah) are all rare, natural pearls that come from large clams found off the coast of the Philippines. Currently valued at over $100 million, the Pearl of Puerto would be a lifelong fortune for the fisherman if it is eventually sold.
Talk your way into buying a sample of something and you should be able to get a nice strand at a very low price. This is what I suggest for buying in Hong Kong. It is a great place to buy pearls, but you do need to know what you want and what you are looking for before you go in.