[mikehrz]

I had never heard of this until today in this thread.

Originally Posted by Ziede Erskine

That is one of those new high-tech claims. Actually, lasers cannot dye anything. They only burn holes. It sure can get hot.

It does sound fake, all right. Does anyone know how it's supposed to work? Is it supposed to be a means of heating the pearl's surface? or vaporizing the dye? Or is there any explanation offered for it?

I found very few references via Google; this was pretty much the only one that wasn't from a retailer:
http://gochina.about.com/od/shopping/p/BuyingPearls.htm

Fresh water pearls naturally occur in white, ivory, pink, peach and coral. You'll find an amazing range of colors in the markets from silvers and dark grays, electric blues and greens, firey oranges and yellows, and neon purples and lavenders. Most of these colors are achieved using a special laser-dye process common to mainland China and Hong Kong.

Of course, no one (at least no one here) would expect about.com to be a source of accurate info on pearls. But to say that "most" of the colors come from laser dyeing... who told them that?

[jshepherd]

You hear story after story after story in China about the different processes. You really cannot believe anything until you see it with your own eyes. I have never seen freshwater pearls dyed with a laser before.
I have heard the laser story previously, although I have never seen anything remotely resembling a laser changing colors of freshwater pearls. This last trip I was told by a seller at Ruans that the new gold color they are producing is done by Japanese laser - I would not give it much weight, however.
The dyed goldens (I am going to refer to them as dyed) look quite a bit like the golden South Sea, but they do not hold a candle to the naturally colored freshwaters with a nice golden overtone. These often have a deep, beautiful orient. The colors of the strands are never really gold, however. More of a bronze-lavender.