| Day 5
The group was scheduled to take an island tour today; a museum, a garden, and a blowhole were all on the list. But having seen my share of blowholes and gardens I decided to skip this day and spent it instead shooting video of the island – in relation to pearls, of course.
There was also a group dinner scheduled – a sort of farewell to the island dinner. But I had previously arranged a meeting with pearl farm owner Josh Humbert, so I did not attend.
Josh is a young, friendly guy. Definitely the youngest pearl farmer I have ever met from French Polynesia.
Although we had originally only planned to have dinner together, Josh had just recently harvested pearls from his farm. Many of them were second graft pearls, promising to be somewhat large. I asked him to fly his harvest in to Papeete so I could take a look at them before dinner. They arrived just a few hours before we were to meet. He only brought the rounds.
The first lot, the larger 11.0 mm+ size pearls was quite dark. A quick check of a couple handfuls showed 30-35% A/B grade, which is not bad for this size and second graft. The pearls were also quite dark.
The second lot was 8-11.00 mm, and was even darker than the first, and had a lot more peacock mixed in. The ratio was slightly better than the larger lot with approximately 40% A/B.
Although our inventory really only lacks larger pearls at the moment, I decided to make an offer for 50% of both lots. We did not negotiate much, although truthfully Josh's asking prices were quite a bit market, but 50% of the pearls were only about 2 kilos, so I decided to buy them anyway. He does have some amazing-color pearls, and I did want the chance to “experiment” with them later.
Afterward we headed to dinner and celebrated our first deal. He dropped me back off at the hotel where the group had just started desert. I was able to have a glass of wine with them and in the end stayed out a little late with Akira and two of the Robert Wan's employees.
Another night of setting an early alarm, we are leaving for Papeete International Airport at 6:30 in the morning.
Day 6
Today started with a 5:30 am wake up call from the front desk. Our flight had been delayed. Not only had it been delayed, however, it had been delayed until 10:30pm.
Many of the group took the opportunity to visit Moorea or do even more shopping; I spent the day reading by the pool and catching up on emails. We left for the airport late that evening, and the flight left without incident. |