PEARL GRADING & QUALITY

Pearls are graded according to several characteristics – lustre, shape, colour, surface and size.

Lustre

The quality of a pearl’s nacre gives the lustrous quality for which pearls are renowned. Putting it simply, it refers to how shiny the pearls are:

• Low lustre pearls appear milky or chalky.
• High lustre pearls reflect light well and show mirror-like reflections.

Put your pearls on a white surface or a white cloth near a window on a reasonably bright day and see how the pearls reflect the window frame. The clearer the reflection, the more lustrous the pearls.

Lustre depends a great deal on the quality of care bestowed on the product in its early growing stages. The better the pearl producer cares for his molluscs, the better the pearl.

As with natural pearls, high quality lustrous pearls make up only a fraction of the pearls available on the market, and command the very highest prices.

Since a very lustrous baroque pearl is probably more desirable than a round milky pearl, lustre is generally considered to be one of the most important aspects of a pearl’s grading and valuation.

Shape

Pearls come in a fascinating variety of shapes, and whilst the rounder the pearl, the more valuable it is, the baroque and off-round shapes have become very popular today. Naturally, this puts the price of the pearls within the budget of a larger market.

Round is generally the most expensive variety. A proper round pearl is symmetrical and will roll in a straight line. Again, only a small percentage of total pearl production will give you true round pearls.

There are various terms such as ‘near round’, ‘off-round’, ‘almost round’, all used as indications that the pearls are ‘roundish’ in various degrees.

Other terms used are egg round/oval or potato which indicate an ‘extended’ round shape – but which can often look round. You might find that these pearls will look round in photographs and where the shape is not stated, you will quite often ‘perceive’ them to be round. These would usually be covered in the Semi-baroque category.

Semi-baroque is a general term that typically covers regular shapes of pearls that are neither round nor off-round and would include button, pear, rondelle, drop shapes and ovals as mentioned above.

Baroque is a general term that indicates an irregular shape. Whilst typically they are the most inexpensive type of pearls, certain specimens can be more valuable than round pearls. Famous baroque pearls have been designed as special jewellery pieces throughout history.

Colour

Pearls come in a wide range of natural colours/shades, and many pearls are dyed to suit fashion requirements. Natural colours include the whites, creams, pinks, lilacs, silver and gold shades as well as black for the Tahitian pearls from the black-lipped oyster.

Besides the body colour, in more expensive pearls you will usually find colour overtones which reflect the pearl’s heart; for example, a white pearl may have a silver or light pink overtone.

Colour is a matter of personal taste and is often selected on the grounds of whether it suits the wearer’s skin tone or not.

Geographically, Americans are said to prefer pink pearls, Europeans prefer white and cream, whereas South Americans and Middle Eastern people go more for the cream and gold colours.

Cream and gold colours are believed to suit dark and olive skins, while some feel whites and pinks are more suitable for Caucasians and Asians.

Try clothes of the same colour as the pearls – if the colour of the clothes suits you, then the pearls should do as well.

Surface

The fewer blemishes a pearl has, the more valuable it is. Blemishes are marks, bumps or little pot holes which, in reality, give each strand its unique identifying factors.

To find pearls without blemishes is rare and their price is likely to be astronomical, given other quality factors being high. One has to remember, pearls are organically grown and just like the human body, no two are exactly alike.

Think of blemishes on pearls as moles or fingerprints. However, any serious damage (e.g. cracks, nacre chipped off, etc.) to the nacre is to be avoided as almost certainly this will affect the longevity of the pearl.

When assessing pearls, always look at each pearl individually and carefully to judge the surface quality.

Size

The larger the pearl, the more valuable it is. Usually it would have been in the mollusc longer, thus incurring a longer/higher investment cost.

Each of the main types of pearls has a common range of sizes:

• Freshwater pearls typically range from 3mm up to 12mm,
• South Sea or Tahitian Pearls start from around 8mm right up to 18mm or larger.
• Akoya pearls average 4mm to 10mm.

Identical pearls of the same quality in sizes up to 5.5 or 6mm do not vary greatly in price. It might be 10/20% more for the next 0.5 or 1mm up in size. However, a jump of 1mm after 6mm, especially around 8 or 9mm (considered large), will cause the price to jump 50% or even 100%.