Hi Caitlin,

You can lacquer vapor-deposition-treated pearls but you do not have to. The surface structure of the aragonite keeps the deposition layer well in place and they will wear off together eventually. As far as fabulized Akoyas, Tahitians and South Sea pearls go, their high resulting luster and color rating makes them so expensive that most buyers of them keep them locked up and only wear them maybe 10 times in their lives.

In fabulized freshwater pearls, that is a different matter, as those are typically used in fashion jewelry and given some heavy wear. Those are usually dipped in "diamond paint" which leaves the surface treament very resilient and durable. The process is still a touch on the expensive side so do not expect those for just a few dollars a strand. The really cheap kind is probably still just coated with some mardi-gras-beads paint.

Please note that expensive here is a relative term. The shell beads from Cool Beads are probably a testmarket run. Expect prices for fabulized pearls to go up as the process finds market acceptance but nowhere near the "upscale kind." I suppose the treatment trend will also be thicker layers of niobium on the fabulized freshwaters and lighter layers of gold and rhodium for the "high-end." When the treatment becomes widely known and accepted, the Mystiquery sellers will probably argue that the precious metal deposition is just so much more expensive (which it is not) that it adds value and their faithful followers will run to get their precious Fabulitians while they can.

Zeide