I’m a gem enthusiast, and finally remembered to check Bochic’s website, after having seen their ads numerous times.
Considering that these are cultured pearls that they are proffering, the prices are astounding, for example, a double strand for $17000. Granted, it does look like a superb piece, and, what’s more, the pearls are uniform in size, which always makes a strand much more expensive, but I had no idea that pearls were that valuable.
Are there any knowledgeable Dopers out there who can say something about the price of pearls?
I think it’s a common misperception that cultured pearls are somehow costume jewelry or in the same realm as cubic zirconias. That’s not hte case at all - virtually all modern pearl jewelry is made with cultured pearls. Chances are that most of us have never seen natural pearls - every pearl producer in the world nowadays offers cultured pearls.
Natural pearls are usually not the perfectly round, beautifully colored things we think of as pearls, and the ones that are cost well above what the average person can spend on jewelry - hundreds of thousands of dollars per strand. This page talks more about cultured versus natural pearls.
So in answer to your question - yeah, that’s probably a fair price for top-quality cultured pearls. I have a string of Mikimotos that Mr. Athena gave me, and they’re absolutely gorgeous. I don’t know what they cost - they were a gift - but I gather they were far from cheap.
Interestingly, however, there is a P.G. Wodehouse novel in which the substitution of a necklace of cultured pearls for one of natural pearls figures largely, and the cultured pearls were treated as if they were fakes. Yet, it required the expertise of Jeeves to distinguish them from the natural article.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that pre-Mikimoto, cultured pearls weren’t the things they are nowadays. So if the novel was set in the 19th century (or even in the first part of the 20th century), then certainly they could be of very low quality.
It’s hard to tell with Wodehouse, since his novels were generally set in a time vaguely between the World Wars. But I think this particular novel was written around 1940.
Even after the day of Mikimoto, there were no doubt many inferior cultured pearls being farmed and harvested. I remember visiting Sea World around 1970, and they were practically giving pearls away at the pearl diving exhibit. Either they were free, or extremely cheap, and mounted in a sort of binder that explained about cultured pearls. As well as I can remember, these pearls did have good luster and color, but the nacre coating tended to come off very easily, and the ‘seed’ used as the initial irritant was quite large.
Sea World still does that, and yes, the nacre on those is a very thin coating on the bead. In general, however, the cultured pearls available today are true gemstones, each one requiring heavy investment in equipment and skilled labor.