My story of buying pearl necklace and earring :

I made a decision: I was about to order Akoya pearls! I chose what I want and I was about to place an order (reputable seller by internet), when on their internet site I spotted a mention of something named "Handama" pearls. Not knowing what it is, I “goggled” the word. Guess where I ended up getting my information from. Of course: Pearl-guide site !!!
I started reading and reading and then reading some more……Pretty quickly, I found Freshadamas !!! I dropped the idea of Akoyas within half an hour of reading your posts. Boy, you guys have power of persuasion!!!!!
Freshadamas is what I bought!! 9-10mm 18” strand and matching dangle earrings from PearlParadise. They arrived today. BEAUTIFULL !!! Exactly what you guys wrote about in so many posts and all of it in such a glowing terms!!! I won’t post any pictures because I can’t do better ones than jms625 in his post from June 2006. My set is similar – just the pearls are bigger. Anyway pearls are much nicer “in life” than any of the pictures that I found attached to other posts !!!
Thank you PearlParadise and thank all of you who share your knowledge here with rest of the “mortals” who want to spend money on pearls but have no idea how to do it intelligently….. You saved me from making a mistake of not even considering FWP in the beginning ( I thought them to be really inferior quality – all the “hype” around salt water ones and Akoya especially, makes somebody like me think that freshwater ones are no better than “beads”)….

Hi imanit,

I am happy about every person that buys high-grade freshwater pearls because it means that their children and grandchildren will also have the benefit of wearing and appreciating them. Hopefully some day the pearl plating industry and its Mystiquery machine will wake up and start changing their consumer-unfriendly ways. But for now, you have lasting and durable cultured pearls without need for quotation marks and at an incredibly low price tag that makes it feasible to wear them every day. That's what I call a win-win situation. Not to mention that the same amount of money you spend on your 10mm freshadama set would barely buy you a pair of 8mm hanadama studs at a bricks-and-mortar jeweler. Triple that for the exaltet rodent.

Zeide

After all I couldn't resist taking few pictures...

I think they are just georgous and once I get rid of this tahitian itch, I'll be right behind you trotting down the Freshadama road.

Susan

[jshepherd]

Great photos, by the way. It looks as though someone has a bit of a photography background! Pearls are notoriously difficult to shoot.

Hi Jeremy,
I'll pay you back the compliment: Great pearls ! - it's easy to take good pictures of a beautiful subject !!

Congrats! they look beautiful!