I think I have heard of pearls being “shaved” or “peeled” in order to remove imperfections- the practice was mentioned in the YA novel “The Black Pearl” by Scott O’Dell.
Looks like Vinegar is the way to test them…but they get destroyed in the process.
I know that you can “shave” pearls by removing a layer of the nachre (the layer of “pearl” that the oyster deposits)
Thanks for the tips, but are there any non-destructive ways to determine if it’s a pearl?
Daylon
Just rub it against your front teeth like someone mentioned before. You will know right away. If it feels grittty, it’s real. If it feels smooth, it’s a costume jewelry bead.
I retract this. She says that it does work though she doesn’t use it.
Cut them in half and examine them under a microscope.
Real pearls will show layers like the rings of a tree stump/log.
My mother is a GIA gemologist. Yesterday, I got a very fancy hairstick from LongLocks.com and she mistook the dark Apache Gold beads to be pearls by rubbing them against her teeth. In her defense, IIRC, I think Apache Gold is sedimentary rock and therefore would have “grits” in the same way pearls do. So perhaps we can generalize that the teeth rubbing test would discern the difference between flour/plastic and stones of tiny compressed mineral particles.
As to its value, we sell jewelry on eBay and our pearl necklaces typically fetch $25-125 apiece on eBay for full strands of round cultured pearls. The pearl market is way overflooded. What REALLY gets the money are the Mabe Pearls, but I’m sure the market for that will be flooded soon as they’re figuring out how to culture them as well.
Interesting. Here in Broome, a town famous for its pearling industry, mabe pearls are cheap. They are also all cultured. Some mabes are even created by inserting a shaped nucleous, a heart for example, which would result in a heart shaped mabe pearl.
Interesting… based on your post I eBayed mabe pearl… and indeed there’s a bunch of crap going for $5. How much do high quality ones sell for?
“Cheap” may also be quite relative. A single mabe pearl is currently far more valuable than a single regular pearl. Our cheapest mabe pearl item to date was a pendant that went for $90. Meanwhile we also sold an 18" necklace entirely made of very nice cultured 7-7.5mm white round pearls for $25… please note that for jewelry, retail markups are approximately 3 to 5 times what they would sell on eBay. (Although it’s VERY hard for laymen to tell a listing for genuine fine jewelry from a deceptive listing–I can go on and on about this–I can start a thread on how to buy jewelry on eBay if anyone asks).
To the OP, your pearls & $2 will buy a cup of coffee at the local bakery. If you want to get into the pearl business, it’s far more profitable to buy a bunch of oysters from one of those cultured pearl farms, move to Florida, and have unwitting tourists pay $9 to open an oyster that is “guaranteed” to have a pearl inside.
Oh, and how long have those mabe pearls been cultured? I’d love to go over there and take a look. 
Mikimoto pearls take my breath away. These photos and the information there will answer a few questions. I’m still not so sure that he was the first to culture pearls. I think maybe he perfected the art.
Unfortunately I’m away from home tonight so I can’t ask my wife for details. My impression is that most of their mabe jewellery is pendants and generally sells for a few hundred australian dollars. Some of their pearl strands sell in the tens of thousands of dollars. Of course a strand has more pearls than a pendant.
Paspaley Pearls would be one of the more upmarket pearl companies here. A brief browse of their website shows a strand of round pearls for $50,000 Aus, also one for just under $100,000 Aus, that one has diamonds in it though. A lot of their stuff is “price on application”, I think that if you need to ask for a price then you probably can’t afford it :).
Paspaley don’t appear to do mabe pearls
Mabe pearls certainly seem to be in the “affordable for the average tourist” price range, unlike some of the strands.
As I said earlier, a lot of the price for a strand is in the matching of the pearls. The price for a strand would most likely be a lot more than the sum of prices for the individual pearls.
Those are gorgeous pearls. If they’re not dyed, and they don’t appear to be, I can easily see how they’d be selling for thousands of dollars.
Yep it’s nice stuff. My wife works for Willie Creek Pearls and although their stock is more aimed at the casual shopper, they still have some very beautiful pieces.
I never had much of an interest in pearls before moving to Broome. Now that I know a little about them, I can certainly see their appeal. I would even consider getting a “Man Pearl” (generally a single pearl set on a black neoprene neckband suitable for the man of the house to wear.)
Of course like all jewellery, it costs a lot and does nothing (when worn as jewellry.) People are funny like that though, they have a sense of “beauty” and are willing to pay for it.