[Orlando]

Hello pearl guide people,

As I mentioned in a message yesterday I was awaiting some pearls from shecy pearl jewelry in China yesterday. We today they have arrived and I am comparing them to the pearls I got from a poster here and I am concerned. The pearls from the company here are AA+ and the pearls from shecy are AAA.

Can anyone tell me how this is possible? The shecy pearls are the pearls that are a little bit smaller. It is only supposed to be ½ a millimeter smaller. But what most is concerning to me is the difference in the way they look. To me the pearls that are grade lower look so much nicer than the pearls that are graded highest.

This might be a amateur question, but am I missing something? What do you experts think about the pearls?

I am editting this post because I got a message from a member asking me what strand is from who.

The smaller looking strand is from Shecy Pearl Jewelry in China. It is supposed to be their AAA quality.
The larger, better looking strand is from Pearl Paradise. It is graded AA+ but is much better quality than Shecy AAA grade.
Sorry about the photos.

[Raisondetre]

Well, there has been some discussion about Shecy pearls misrepresenting their products. I was surprised people still took the risk, but I thought you might have been lucky.

If these are meant to be Akoyas then they're certainly not high-grade ones. The luster doesn't even compare to freshwaters, and I'm not even sure they are Akoyas in the first place although they are round enough. There has been down-sizing in China for freshwaters, but I don't think it's extended to Akoyas as the Japanese are pretty stringent about what their requirements are. I think it's hard to find good Akoyas in China at a retail level as the Japanese market is so big and they tend to cherry pick the best of the small lots. The rest are snapped up by vendors like the ones here.

How much did you pay for them? Apart from the obvious small size (seems to me there's at least 1 mm difference in diameter - it's not possible to be 0.5 mm) the luster is way subpar. The thing is there is no universal grading system for pearls unless you get them GIA certified for $130 or something. They can say anything regarding the pearl grading. Vendors here usually employ the A-AAA criteria which are well-defined. I wouldn't expect Shecy pearls to follow that. Akoyas should have metallic luster to be classifed as AA or above. I can't really comment on surface blemishing as it's not quite clear enough. Overtone doesn't factor into grading.

I'd you got a raw deal.

[tanakarn1]

The small AAA akoya look not very good to me, low luster & no overtone. However, the AA+ akoya look as beautiful as Hanadama with strong rose overtone. I have never seen the AA+ Akoya like this.

You could try to measure the size of pearls.

[Valeria101]

All I see is that the large ones practically glow while the others don't even come close at all.

There are no grades for pearls.. meaning, each seller applies some names as they wish. As far as I understand, Hanadama is a brand applied by a Japanese lab - like the diamond grades of GIA and what not. I am not terribly surprised that not all deserving pearls get a Hanadama certificate (even if sold side by side by the same seller as different 'grades'? that's pushing the argument, but... whatever I don't know where the pearls come from, what the seller's policy is). Also, it could be that some detail does make a difference between the other pearls and Hanadama... who knows... at least one grading factor - nacre thickness - cannot be 'seen'.

2c

The larger pearls look impressive in the pics!

PS. re size... it is easy to 'measure' the on a photo - 2d easier then 3D. The small ones are about 14% smaller (by diameter) then the others.

[Orlando]

The bigger pearls are from Pearl Paradise. I am also checking the appraisal that came with the pearls from Pearl Paradise and it says AAA even though I ordered AA+.

So I am correct in assessing that the pearls from shecy jewelry are very low grade and should not be called AAA? The worst is under the light because I can almost see through them and I see lines and it just is not pretty to me. This sucks because now I have to figure out how much it will cost to return the pearls all the way to China. It might not even be worth it.

[jshepherd]

I would comment on the pearls from Shecy, but I don’t think it is necessary. The pictures tell the full story. I believe it was Amanda from PurePearls.com that saw an example of theirs up close as well so I am not surprised based on her account.

A funny thing though. Shecy Pearl Jewelry has a habit of playing games with other pearl sellers in a sort of harassing way. Just recently, for example, we received the email below from a supposed “customer”.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben [mailto:gxywrj2004@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 11:08 PM
To: sales
Subject: price very high
i found your price is very high compare with shecy pearls, what is
reason?

We immediately found the email suspect because of style of the question and the problems with the author's English – not to mention the fact that the IP address was cloaked. So I did a quick search on the email address from which the question was posted. This is what I found.

There are only two results on google for the email address. The first is someone in Guilin China (where Shecy Pearl Jewelry and its mirror company Perluna Pearls is based) that appears to have pearls for sale! (edit! after this post they changed it to read Nanning).
Ben's pearls for sale

The second result is a personal ad from a man in Guilin China as well.
Edit: Personal Ad has been deleted!

The post clearly came from Shecy Pearls.

Well today I am finally going to answer your question, Ben from Shecy Pearl Jewelry. Look at post #1. Orlando explains it pretty well in my opinion.

[pearllove]

Hi Orlando,
Too bad you got such a bad deal from Shecy Pearl. However, because of your posts, we now know not to buy from Shecy, so thank you.

The smaller pearls look to be of low quality, but the larger pearls are beautiful. I love the high luster and strong rose overtone. May I ask what mm the larger pearls are?

pearllove

[jerin]

Originally Posted by Orlando

The bigger pearls are from Pearl Paradise. I am also checking the appraisal that came with the pearls from Pearl Paradise and it says AAA even though I ordered AA+.

So I am correct in assessing that the pearls from shecy jewelry are very low grade and should not be called AAA? The worst is under the light because I can almost see through them and I see lines and it just is not pretty to me. This sucks because now I have to figure out how much it will cost to return the pearls all the way to China. It might not even be worth it.

Hi Orlando,
if you can see "lines" I think the nacre is very thin (too thin) so that the growthlines of the shell nucleus can be seen. It means the pearls are not going to last very long before the nacre is going to disappear.
In China you can very often see the sellers call their grades AAAA+++, that does not mean a thing, unfortunately.

You have however at least the fine pearls from Pearl Paradise and hopefully you did not have to pay too large an amount for the Akoyas from China. The size difference seems to be more than 1 mm at least.

Pleas inform us about it and perhaps you can us give the price too, it would be very interesting.

Better luck next time (keep to our vendors mentioned on this forum) and you will not get disappointed!

[Slraep]

Hi Orlando,

Wow, the pearls from Shecy look like chalk compared to the PP ones. The lines you see in the Shecy pearls is the MOP nucleus. I think that moving the pearl and seeing the nucleus through the nacre is called blinking.

Makes one feel like a "chump" as someone else said in another post.

Slraep

[Kevin Canning]

well I always had a bad feeling about those guys, especially after perlunapearls.com(same company) stole my pictures. Orlando those pics are worth a 1000 words though, not a great review.

[Ashley]

My, my, my... those are pretty awful!

[jshepherd]

This is actually a post to Shecy as I know they monitor this thread.

The pictures on this page, in fact pictures on several of the "info" pages on your site, are stolen photos. The second picture on this page has been stolen from Pearl Paradise.

http://www.shecypearljewelry.com/pea...ter-nacre.html

taken from:

http://www.pearlparadise.com/qualitypearls.html

[Kevin Canning]

I just don't understand why these companies continually steal photos. As a consumer I'd find it pretty insulting if a company tried to use stolen property to earn my business.

[Caitlin]

Did Shecy take them down already? I didn't see any photos on that page.....

Maybe the "factory" "gave" them the photos to use, eh?

[jshepherd]

It is still there. Scroll down to the nacre description. It is the photo taken from our Web site just flipped around in the opposite direction.

That photo, by the way, is special. The view of the nacre and the rings is genuine. It is more than just a photoshop creation. We took a sawed pearl and bent the photo of the nacre at a 90 degree angle and placed the image over a whole pearl to show what the inside actually looks like.