About The Pearl Market
In 2017 we celebrated our 15th birthday. It seems only yesterday that The Pearl Market was born - inspired by a visit to the original pearl market in Beijing.
The Beijing market is not, as you might suppose, a quaint collection of bamboo stalls. Rather, it occupies the entire floor of a massive shopping complex. An army of pearl sellers peer from behind counters laden with pearls of every size, shape and colour. When the market is quiet, stallholders doze peacefully behind their displays. Don’t be fooled though. Tourists have more chance of stepping over a sleeping wolf than passing a stall without the owner snapping awake.
Our business philosophy is simple. To price competitively without compromising quality and offer great service. Many customers buy pearls as a gift. The last thing they want is to be embarrassed by poor pearls, cheap fittings, sloppy workmanship, cardboard jewellery boxes or late delivery.
has helped many people through the pearl buying maze.
The Pearl Market Limited, Drefach Felindre, Llandysul, Carmarthenshire SA44 5YW
The Pearl Market ™ is a trademark of The Pearl Market Limited © 2002-2018
I have a two-row necklace of good quality cultured pearls in their original box with the sale receipt, purchased in 1963 from Morris Goldman Ltd of 53 Vittoria Street, Birmingham, that has been valued at about £700 by a designer maker of pearl necklaces. They are described in the receipt as '2 Row No. 3 Culture Pearl Necklet with Silver Paste Snap' and the price was £12 15s 0d or £15 18s 9d with purchase tax. Please would you advise me of how best I might sell them, and how much they would be likely to fetch?
£700 might be a reasonable figure to replace your double-strand necklace but I'd be surprised if you achieved anything like that as a resale value. There is no obvious place to sell, or market for, second-hand pearls unless it's somewhere like ebay where rock-bottom prices are the rule.
What you have is a nice looking set of Rosita simulated pearls. £5.5.0 in 1932 is the equivalent of about £330 today but I don't think you would get anything like that if you tried to sell them. If you look on Ebay you'll find many examples of Rosita pearls so you can judge for yourself what they are worth.
HOW DO I SELL MY PEARLS ?
Hi i have been left some pearls, they were approx 78 loose range from 2mm to 6mm and in an envelope. I would like to sell them, can you help.
From the photographs it looks like these 'pearls' were once a graduated necklace. They are very badly drilled and I don't think they are real pearls. It's not worth your while trying to sell them.
I have black pearls I'd like to sell. They have never been worn. The certificate states they are 8-9mm in size cultivated. Product number 00167. They are on silk string with matching stud earrings. I've had a look online but can't find an obvious way of valuing or selling so any advice would be appreciated.
Sadly there isn't any obvious way of selling or valuing your pearls. Unlike precious metals like gold, silver or platinum, pearls - like most gemstones - have no 'scrap' value to provide a starting point for a valuation. There are some online sites that offer to buy second-hand jewellery but they are usually interested in the scrap value of any metal in the piece, not the item of jewellery itself.
The fact is that there just isn't much of a market for second-hand pearls, worn or not. Their value bears little relation to their cost new. Your pearls are worth only what someone else is prepared to pay for them. A decent second-hand jeweller might make you an offer but this is likely to be around one half to one third what they think they can then sell them for. If you try somewhere like Ebay you'll find it swamped with pearls - some are bargains, others over-priced rubbish, others scams.
Unless there is something special about the pearls (and from your brief description I doubt it) my advice would be to give them to someone who will appreciate them. If you're determined to sell them look around the various online pearl websites to find the new price of an identical set. Then try a classified ad' in your local paper or even a local auction house for a realistic price, but don't expect too much.
Well you could leave it behind on the bus or crush it with a coal hammer but if you mean where could you sell it, and for how much, don't bother. These 'find a pearl' shops are, at best, a bit of fun for the family but the pearls have little or no value. The certificates they give you are worthless. Keep your pearl as a souvenir of your trip.
I'm afraid that many of these pearl places abroad are set up to relieve tourists of their cash. The valuations they provide are not realistic but justify the prices they charge. Your pearl wasn't worth 86.88 euros in 2007 and it's not worth that now. I'd keep the pearl as a reminder that your mum and dad were thinking about you when they were on their holiday.
Pearl specialists know their products and usually offer a wider range of better quality pearl jewellery.
We have been donated a pearl necklace and we would like to find out more about them and price. The pearls are not perfectly round, some have small like nipples and is set with either white gold or silver (the metal is hallmarked). We were told to lightly scratch the surface of one pearl, in which we did and it is the same lustre underneath as if we did not scratch it at all. Any information to help us would be great.
Don't do any more scratching. That's crazy and tells you nothing. You haven't given me much information about the pearls so I can't comment. If you want to send a picture it might help and if you do, then put a pound coin beside the necklace pearls to give an idea of their size. When you say 'hallmarked' it should contain a number. What is it ? Don't get your hopes up. We went through about 50 necklaces that had been donated to the British Heart Foundation and they were all imitation.
The main difference between Akoya and freshwater pearls is the method of culturing. Akoyas have a bead inserted as the nucleus whereas freshwater pearls have a small piece of tissue inserted to stimulate nacre (pearl) production. In Akoyas, the nacre is laid down around the bead which is fine providing the oyster spends long enough in the water to develop a thick nacre layer (at least 0.3mm). If it doesn't, the nacre can split, crack and flake off. This has become more commonplace over the last decade as commercial pressure on pearl farmers has led to earlier harvests.
