The pearls arrived today! I was so excited to see them get here so quickly. I still have no idea what they are.
I did the tooth test (which is about as good as I get with pearl IDs) and they are real. Of the pearls I own, they most resemble Sea of Cortez. The colors look very similar to a pair I have and their skins are so similar. Both these new mystery pearls and my Sea of Cortez pearls have bumpy skins. I'm not sure what to call this, though I bet it has a name, they almost have tiny little depressions over the skin making them appear very vaguely dimpled or honeycombed. Did that make sense? One pearl has nicer luster than the other. In natural lighting, I can see my reflection in both pearls. I can make faces in the pearls and see the change in my face in the reflections. (I'm so technical, huh?) But, one pearl appears duller and one shows a crisper reflection. Since both pearls have a bumpy, wavy skin there is this amazing effect, especially in one pearl, where it almost appears as though you are looking at an iridescent translucent bubble and the image appears to be more inside the pearl than reflected from the outer layer. I see a similar effect on a strand of Tahitian keishi pearls that I have. (Again, so technical! Is this what was called "water" in the previous discussions on the board?) The other "Sea of Cortez-ish" feature of the pearls is the orient. These pearls exhibit a really strong orient that matches almost exactly the orient in my Sea of Cortez earrings. They both display a really striking turquoise and purply-pink color in their orient that I do not see on any of my other pearls (those with orient). I'm attaching two photos I took of the pearls with my Sea of Cortez earrings. I'm still a disaster at shrinking these pictures. I'm not sure if you can really even see the pearls in these smaller photos. So, if anyone wants to see the full size image, PM me your address and I'll happily send off the bigger file. Ideas on where to go from here?
P.S. To Jeremy: I can't seem to get a good pic of the blemishes. I'll try more tomorrow.