New Birthday Pearl Necklace Commissioned!!

[Amrita]

Had a bit of a roller coaster ride there.... But am glad it is all sorted out in the end.

[GemGeek]

Who knew there would be so much pearl drama? Poor both of you to go through that!

[lisa c]

Hooray! Great story, super outcome!

Zengirl, where'd you get your catch phrase about surrendering the hat? It's really cute.

[zengirl]

At the moment there is a....um...slight blemish in my neck area, and although small, it wouldn't look so nice in a photo. It may distract from the beautiful pearls. HAHAHAHA I'm waiting for it to go before I take the photo. <blush>

[zengirl]

It is a quote from a woman called Margaret Thatcher (I'm sure you've heard of her!). When her twins were born her husband gave her a double stranded pearl necklace to sybolise her two children: precious, alike, together, but different. As her political career began to develop and she decided to run for leader of the Conservative Party in the seventies, she had to submit to media training - the first leader of Britain to have this kind of thing. They wanted to make sure her image was less hectoring housewife and more authoritative leader. Her image makeover men asked her to change her voice, cease wearing fussy little hats, alter her clothes, and stop wearing her pear necklace. My signature quote is her reply to their advice. Indeed, if you put my quote into YouTube you can probably find the exact clip from the film where she says this (where Margaret Thatcher is played by the fabulous Meryl Streep). I've never been a particular Thatcher fan, but the quote just leapt out at me. I.E. You can change anything you like about me to make me a leader but no-one is touching my pearls. Well... me too! :-D

[zengirl]

This is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9IMSiH6v2w

[Marianne]

Thanks for sharing, made my day

[dkan 168]

zengirl,

Pics of your new necklace please, and you can edit out the blemish using Photoshop etc...

Also, please compare it against your eBay purchase, so that we can better appreciate the difference in quality.

DK

[zengirl]

Ok, so this will be very interesting. One necklace cost £20, the other cost £200. Simple as that. I actually love them both, but I know when I wear the Harmony Pearls that I'm wearing something of good quality, that is obviously lovely. The other is just another pearl necklace, if I can dare to phrase it that way, even though I do actually really like it. The ebay one is more gold, the Harmony one more white. The eBay one has more flaws and discoulourations etc.. Of course you get what you pay for but here, look for yourselves. To my beginner eyes there isn't an immediate glaringly obvious difference in pearl quality (although the obvious difference is the size of course, and the quality of the clasp).

[pattye]

zengirl,

Thank you for the photos, yes, great comparison and observations. You'll enjoy wearing them both!

Love your signature line and the source, thanks for the link.

[zengirl]

Thank you Pattye.

The £20 necklace was advertised on eBay as, '16" AAA GRADE 7.5-8MM WHITE AKOYA PEARL NECKLACE.'
Now that I have photographed it (although admittedly they aren't very good pictures of the individual pearls) does everyone agree that they are not akoya's but a strand of FWs?

[zengirl]

Need some answers to the above question, if possible.

I've just done a straw poll on my facebook page with the two neckalces photographed side-by-side, asking all my friends to tell me which one is the expensive hand-picked necklace and which the dirt cheap eBay one. It's split equally with half the people saying the eBay necklace looks like the best pearl necklace, and the other half plumping for the Harmony pearls. In my view there are two reasons for this:

1) Beauty is obvious: the dirt cheap eBay necklace is actually composed of akoyas and people are genuinely seeing amazing pearls and picking them out
2) Ignorance: people haven't a clue, and are used to seeing cheap (nasty?) pearls and their immitations, so much so that now people think they are the best pearls because of exposure only to the inferior type (ie it's what most lay people have come to expect pearls to look like).

[Amanda]

Or, to be honest:

3. Your photos aren't close-up or good enough for people to able to tell much.

[perlinda]

I think both are lovely.. but the smaller one seems to have better luster? However you said the ebay pearls are moderately blemished, but we can't tell it from the pictures.

The pearls also appear very round, but I can't tell if that's Akoya or not. For £20, it kinda exceeded my expectation, I think you got a good deal

[Amanda]

To put it another way............

pearls before swine!