# Do Amber and Pearls "Rot" With Time? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 22, 2017, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583 "2017-10-22T20:57:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2017, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583/21 "2017-10-24T23:42:22Z")
Fun trivia fact: Pearls and amber are the two rarest known gems in the Universe. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2017, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583/22 "2017-10-25T00:46:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Fun trivia fact: Pearls and amber are the two rarest known gems in the Universe. Both of course are beat in that category by ammolite on Earth and blerh’talop on Talgox IV. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2017, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583/23 "2017-10-25T08:34:46Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Neither saw the movie nor read the book…but I was aware of that premise. The problem is, I was under the impression that really ancient amber was fossilized – i.e., wholly mineralized. I didn’t know it was still made up of the same original tree-sap molecules it formed from! Amber is pretty much a natural form of plastic - the more volatile components evaporate or leach away over time and the less volatile components become polymerised and crosslinked. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2017, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583/24 "2017-10-25T09:12:26Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Fun trivia fact: Pearls and amber are the two rarest known gems in the Universe. What about cowrie shells? Specifically [Monetaria moneta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetaria_moneta)which have historically been used as currency and for making jewellery. At a guess, more common than pearls, less common than amber. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2017, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583/25 "2017-10-25T14:07:00Z")
Hm, I wouldn’t have thought that fossils would count as a distinct type of gemstone. But the Talgoxian blerh’talop, while indeed rare and beautiful, is ruled out by the qualifier “known”. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2017, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583/26 "2017-10-25T14:31:15Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > One of the \*Saint \*stories by Leslie Chateris. Also the basis for an episode of the Roger Moore TV series. > > The Saint comes into possession of a stolen string of pearls. The Police are coming. He has to conceal the pearls quickly, or he will be arrested for the theft. > > He tells Mr Police Detective the story about Cleopatra dissolving a pearl in wine for Caesar. He then points to the wine casserole he has been cooking. Policeman tiops out the casserole, and finds only the string remaining. Policeman leaves in disgust. > > The Twist - the Saint tells the reader that pearls don’t really dissolve in wine. The pearls (minus string) were in his pocket all along. > > Is that the story you saw, **md2000**? Yes, that’s the one. The Saint series was one of my favorites, books and TV, and Chateris’ writing was definitely a treat. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2017, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583/27 "2017-10-25T14:48:41Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > What about cowrie shells? Specifically [Monetaria moneta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetaria_moneta)which have historically been used as currency and for making jewellery. > > At a guess, more common than pearls, less common than amber. As the article notes, money cowries are very common and widely distributed. I’ve picked them up on beaches in the South Pacific. They are certainly more common than amber. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2017, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583/28 "2017-10-25T14:49:56Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > There was some story I recall which included the bit that pearls dissolve in wine. (Alcohol? Acid?) IIRC the claim was extravagant ancient Romans put them in their wine to show off their wealth. Not sure if that was true. That sidetrack reminded me of a story about George de Hevesy, a Hungarian physicist. (Note that this is completely unrelated to the subject of the OP, but it’s a cool story.) From Wikipedia, “When Nazi Germany occupied Denmark from April 1940, during World War II, de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck with aqua regia; it was illegal at the time to send gold out of the country, and had it been discovered that Laue and Franck had done so to prevent them from being stolen, they could have faced prosecution in Germany. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold.” ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2017, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583/29 "2017-10-25T14:58:22Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Hm, I wouldn’t have thought that fossils would count as a distinct type of gemstone. Uh, your example of amber is a fossil. [More fossil-based gemstones](http://geology.com/gemstones/organic-gemstones/). ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2017, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583/30 "2017-10-25T15:29:16Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > You could do that nowadays if you wanted to. The highest grade of pearls are extremely expensive but even slight imperfections are a huge drop in price. The lowest grade pearls are just a few bucks a kilo in bulk. Where does one buy low grade pearls in bulk? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2017, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583/31 "2017-10-25T15:40:43Z")
> [@Kron](#): > > Where does one buy low grade pearls in bulk? [This](https://www.jewelrysupply.com/pearls.html) looks like a legitimate site. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-amber-and-pearls-rot-with-time/799583.md?page=1)