Thanks for the responses, rec'd my 2 strands today.
Am so relieved the FW AAA white body-rose overtone from PurePearls is NOTHING like the ones I saw locally.
- PureP's were visually round (maybe one I could detect abit off-round), those I saw locally had LOTS of squished rounds!
- PureP's were relatively blemish-free (I haven't taken a close pearl by pearl examination yet, but overall), those I saw had lots of blemishes.
- I can't say about lustre cos I don't have both side by side for comparison. Can't say about overtone, I thought the local strands had stronger overtone, but very mismatched... some pearls in their strand had stronger tones than the others. PureP's seems to have lighter overtone, but even throughout.
And finally, PureP's were half the "half-price sale" of those I saw locally.
That said, I think I'm abit more used to Akoya's mirror lustre? Compared to Freshwaters, I mean.
As for the tahitians... I really think no one else here wears or sells Tahitian baroques!