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I finally got the results back from GIA this morning and kind of disappointed...it turns out that my pearls are actually cultured salt water akoya. I guess this goes to show that people's use of the word "natural" can be really subjective sometimes. But, they are still pretty pearls and now I...

Yes, I am both anxious and excited and can't wait to see the results and to see the X-ray pix. I hope my mom was right....Thank you for your responses.

Rather than taking more pictures I finally decided to send my pearls off to GIA in New York City. I spoke with their lab and they told me it would be about a week. Going into week two now and they're still working on it, maybe they are backlogged or something but I'm wondering, should it take...

I need some advice as to how I should think about valuing my strand of pearls for insurance/shipping purposes; I'm going to send them to GIA in New York City to finally get them x-rayed. A couple of weeks ago I sent an email to your admin asking for various advice on this subject. I just got...

Thank you!

Hi Dave, I took some more pictures and sending them along. I have images from one pearl earring and also from a pearl brooch as well as some more photos of the loose pearls and some from my strand of pearls. I have been researching gem labs I can send my strand of pearls off to. I think GIA...

Is the nacre of a saltwater pearl less translucent than freshwater?

Hi Sophie, In answer to your question about where the pearls might be from, I started to recall some of the stories my mother told me about her family, notably her (maternal) grandfather who founded the Osaka Electric Light Company around the late 1800's. Anyway Osaka being located in southern...

Yes, I used the flashlight utility on an iPhone, with a little cardboard with a small hole and placed it over the light which seemed to work nicely because the pearl is sitting right on top of the beam of light. I might have to get a better camera though. I also wanted to tell you that the...

Hi Dave, Sending along the candled images I snapped of my pearls below. Are they okay and can you tell anything from the images? Thanks. Best, Namiko

just testing to see if my photo is attached to this message

Can't seem to upload pictures, any suggestions?

Hello Dave, Please excuse me if you have already received my other email that might have been automatically been sent about 10 minutes ago, I was having trouble trying to attach pictures. Well, I finally got some candled images of the pearls. I thought it would be interesting to get some...

Thank you for your response. As you suggested I am trying to put together some kind of contraption to capture candled images. The size of the pearls range in size from 4mm, 4.5 mm, 5mm, 5.5 mm to 6 mm. They are on the small side but still pretty.

Thank you for the info you posted; it's very helpful to me as I try to figure out exactly what it is that I have and also really interesting to learn about pearls.

No, unfortunately there was no clasp when my mother gave it to me.

I inherited these pearls from my mom. She inherited them from her mother, my grandmother. My grandmother was from a very wealthy Japanese family, based in Tokyo prior to WW2 but traveling far and wide with her ambassador husband all over Asia, the Middle East and India. My mother once told me...