[ladywolf]

Hi all you kind folks--

Thank you so much for your input and sympathetic thoughts. Yes, it is sad but true-- I AM down to selling the very last things I own that have any value, just to be able to buy people food, dog food, gas and dish soap--in other words, just to survive on the physical plane. (My emotional plane is pretty wrecked by now...) I have no progeny, no one to leave family memorabilia to, and this does make it easier to think of selling the last family heirlooms...sigh.

But on a different note: I know that the pearls are natural ones, but how would I go about proving it? I have a couple of old appraisals somewhere I think--done perhaps in the 60's and 70's, when they were worth $300-$500. I believe that this was before druzy pearls that look like these began to be cultured and became cheap and easily available. My great-grandfather apparently decided to collect pearls for my mother that would be different and unique, so that HER pearl necklace would stand out from the smooth pearls the other "girls" were wearing in the thirties. I remember her telling me that she wasn't sure she liked them when he first gave them to her, since they did NOT look like everyone else's strands--but I also know that by now, they are of more value than many of those strands of round pearls.

And as I think about it, the pearls may indeed be American as you suggest, not Oriental. I have two gorgeous gold/diamond pins and some vintage silk that I remember hearing that my great-grandfather brought back from the Orient, and I may have confused the origin of the pearls with that of the pins.

Can the pearls speak for themselves in an appraisal--can they tell their own age and history? I don't have the money right now to have a very costly appraisal done. I'm running out of time right now, but later I'll try to get a couple of really good close-up shots and post them.

Later, too, I'll follow through on some of the ideas you have suggested. Thanks!

Ladywolf