| Hi Jeremy,
On eBay you have the option to leave negative feedback. In bricks-and-mortar world you don't. For over a decade entirely fake mabé pearls were sold for lots of money in US jewelry stores. If you look today, most of those are gone but what is being sold as mabés are "mabé-like" pearl-cultured domes filled with epoxy glue and backed with mother of pearl but only in a few select stores will you be able to get actual pteria penguin pearl-cultured domes with epoxy filling and a mother of pearl backing. Is that fraud? I think so. However, it has become industry standard to call these things by their process of manufacture rather than species of origin. Is a freshwater pearl plated bead an akoya just because it has been produced and treated in the same way as an akoya? I don't think so, either.
Zeide
Last edited by Zeide Erskine; 09-25-2006 at 09:22 PM.
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