I answer with, I don't know. I expect to learn and grow I guess?
Fair enough.
As to findings and other settings, try
RioGrande.
On oysters, pearl farmers are not in any position to compete with shams. Oysters take at least two years to rear, sometimes three to become candidates for a pearl graft. Otherwise, they're harvested by divers, who expect a fair wage for an often dangerous task. Then you'd need to consider the deftness of technicians who work with the precision and skills of surgeons. Then you can add another 18 months to three years on top of that. Sometimes harvested pearls are re-grafted for another cycle. The greater part of any harvest has little or no value. Only a minor percentage fetches a premium. Farmers operate with highly nuanced, site specific, non-patented technology which can be co-opted by unscrupulous competitors.
The trinkets being sold at oyster opening parties are previously harvested 25 cent pearls, maybe less and the settings are shoddy. The appraisals offered by the hosts are outright fraudulent. The descriptions and disclosures of these oysters are also patently false. They are instructed to talk about spots, markings and so-called sea grass, which doesn't exist, at least not on oysters. It's algae. The greater number of the host videos I've watched can't even identify a barnacle correctly.
Opening a phony oyster isn't a choice. It's a gamble where the odds are fixed to favor the house.
This pyramid scheme is having a negative effect on legitimate producers, dealers and artisans, by bilking neophyte vendors and cheapskate clients into thinking they're getting a bargain. In reality it's nothing more than a carnival sham. Opening a polluted one year old hatchery reared, artificially implanted oyster with a dyed pearl preserved in a chemical solution is not an experience to be cherished. Instead it instills ignorance and raises disdain for the price points of quality pearls raised by well meaning, ecologically savvy pearl farmers who at great expense and risk work very hard to produce a ethical product.
It is illegal in my country to relay oysters across statistical areas of the same region, no less treated with toxic compounds and shipped internationally. Even if it were permitted, I'd have no intention of even remotely considering the prospect.
So if folks are reluctant to reply to your questions, it's because pearl opening parties are a nefarious undertaking under the current multi-level marketing schemes. They don't feel the need to suffer fools nor enable ignorance.
