Tahitian necklace or not?

S

SusanCk

Guest
I am looking to buy a Tahitian pearl necklace and I found one that seems ot be priced too low to be true. It is on an auction site online and the description reads as such:
"...AAA Tahitian pearl necklace...6.5-7mm round, beautiful black pearls from Tahiti...These pearls are much more valuable that ordinary white pearls...all natural Tahitian pearls..."

I emailed the seller because I am looking for a smaller strand, but I have not hear of a strand this small before. The seller is telling me that the farm he deals with grows the pearls small intentionally so that they will have a niche market.

Would I be wise buying this strand? The price is under $300 and I have found nothing online or off-line near this price range. The seller has nearly all good feedback ratings as well.

Any help on this matter would be appreciated.
 
Please do not buy that strand!!!

It is not a Tahitian necklace at all. You are dealing with a dishonest seller. Tahitian pearls are never this small. The seller is either offering dyed Akoya pearls or freshwater pearls.
I would not suggest buying pearls on eBay at all. There are very, very few eBay sellers that tell the truth about pearls. Here are some rules for eBay:
Rule #1
If the seller is selling 'AAA' Akoya pearls from Japan at incredibly low prices, such as 7mm strands for $99, or 8mm Studs for $40 you can guarantee they are selling low-quality Chinese Akoya pearls. It would be impossible for them to sell pearls as they described as our farms in Japan charge more just to send them to a factory.
Rule #2
If the seller is saying that the pearls are so cheap because they have their own farm, 99.99999999% of this time this will not be true. Farmers do not sell pearls except to the factories. A few farmers own their own factories and then resell to large customers or wholesalers only. These farms are located in very remote places with limitted Internet access, none of them sell on eBay!
Rule #3
If you are dealing with a Chinese seller, in Hong Kong or in China who is claiming to sell Japanese Akoya pearls, they are lying. We do not import pearls to China or Japan EXCEPT to branded stores. Why would they buy the pearls from Japan at a premium just to resell at discount on eBay?!
Rule #4
If the seller claims that the pearls are natural - they are not! Natural strands can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars! They are all cultured.
Rule #5
Watch for the negative feedback. Someone like myself can see immediately if the seller is dishonest in their descriptions. Most consumers cannot. But if the seller is dishonest SOME consumers will know. Maybe you will see 1000 good feedback, and only 30 negative. READ the negative feedback, and see if it is consistent. Watch for things like (very low luster pearls, high blemishes, etc.)
Rule #6
Retail value means absolutely nothing! Do not believe the certificates, appraisals, pictures, or claimed retail values. Unless someone is signing their name to a specific appraisal it is worthless. The appraisal must be for the specific piece as well.
Some of the worst I have seen on eBay are:
v-pearls
This sellers sells some of the lowest quality pearls I have seen (just from the pictures) from China. Yet claims that they are all Japanese pearls (yet ships from China) and that they have values of $7000-$15000 for strands that would not sell for more than $5-$10
Chukuang
Selling very low quality Chinese pearls but all the pictures have been stolen from other Websites (a very common practice on eBay). This seller has had his eBay auctions taken down many times by eBay for these practices.
es_store
You can read my description of v-pearls, it would not surprise me if they are the same people because they do the same things!
DDD
This is actually a US based seller. They actually created a new "GEM" lab to trick buyers. They include outrageously over-valued "appraisals" with the pieces they sell, from the 'Gemological Grading Group' which they claim is an unbiased lab equivalent to the GIA and the EGL. What they do not tell you is the DDD is the same as the GGG and the appraisals are completely worthless!

I could go on and on for hours about different eBay sellers. My suggestion is DO NOT buy! You will have better luck buying from a used car dealer named slick! Buy from jewelers or Websites that have guarantees and will not disappear tomorrow with your money!
 
Ps

Ps

I would like to add that there are a few sellers on eBay that I do respect. But most have either stopped selling or nearly stopped selling. This is because they have been swallowed by the myriad of dishonest sellers.

Jeremiah's Jewelers out of Florida I have always respected. They have great Tahitian pearls from what I see, and great prices!
Edelkontor and selectraders from Germany as well.
Netperles from France.

And I do respect sellers even from China at times when they are honest with their descriptions (of course these sellers do not do much business).
 
I use to sell the pearl on eBay from Japan. Maybe 5 years before this was a good business, but now even though I am farm wholesaler I cannot sell with any profit. Even for my cost I cannot sell the Japanese pearls on the eBay. Before we can sell it in Japan easily, but we do not have the Japanese eBay in Japan anymore.
 
Tahitian Pearl

Tahitian Pearl

Hello:

I agree very much with Kenji. I would sugest you look at your local Jewelry Stores who have been in business for a while and get an education on pearl, train your eyes to the jewelry item. Go your local libarary and find some book on pearl and educate yourself on its history. At last, shop for price, compare apple for apple. Ofcourse, Doing all this does not make you an expert on pearl, but a little product knowledge will help you make better judgement when you are ready to make your purchase. Buttom line is what you pay for is what you get. We are all here to sell for profit and make living.
The Jewelry Hut
 
I found another seller to add to Kenji's list!

I found another seller to add to Kenji's list!

I was just perusing eBay this morning and I came upon another seller. Everything you said is exactly dead on!
The seller is Limingway, and is OF COURSE selling out of China. Here are some highlights of the eBay listing!
Title:
$9200 LUXURIOUS ~AAA+~ GOLDEN CREMÉ AKOYA PEARL *SUPERB
My thoughts:
WOW, $9200 value for Chinese Akoya pearls?!?! Especially with a yellow/cream coloration, which is typically the least expensive?! Amazing!

Description:
Genuine, natural Akoya pearl necklace from Japan.
My thoughts:
Very interesting...they have held onto to this necklace (in China?!) for more than 100 years and then are selling this AAA+ (even with a plus!!!) strand valued at 10 grand for a mere 1-200 dollars! Amazing!

The last line that blew me away!!!:
You will find such a great quality pearls as this nowhere else, even at MIKIMOTO!!!

I am sure Mikimoto would love to see an advertisement like that! It sucks that if we were to make any of the claims that are made daily by these eBay pearl sellers we would get sued so fast we would not know what happened. Yet these thieves (yes thieves) get away with this every day on eBay. It is absolute FRAUD!!! Just looking through the auctions makes me mad. Nearly every piece on eBay is being sold by the same people. All the good auctions you saw in the past for actual quality are completely gone, replaced by junk coming out of China under false pretense. Well, what can you do?! Not a lot of legal room to maneuver since they are selling out of China...Maybe someday eBay will wake up and see what is happening. I am sure it is the same in a lot of different categories!
 
More about eBay auctions...

More about eBay auctions...

I have to agree with all the above posts. Our company used to do more than 50% of our business on eBay. In the last year though, the fraud has gotten so bad that we can no longer sell there. You can look up our feedback on eBay under the name thepearloutlet.

To top it off, we now have to regularly monitor eBay since eBay sellers, sometimes with feedback ratings in the 1000's, steal our pictures. Thanks to VERO, we have eBay remove them, but we shouldn't have to do this.

I'm now firmly entrenched in the beleif that you cannot buy a quality pearl on eBay. I've watched all of the honest sellers in this category, leave because you cannot be honest and still compete. Everything being sold there now is subpar and all appraisals, certificates, etc are grossly inflated.

-The Pearl Outlet
 
Last edited:
Just as a follow-up.
I have decided to NOT buy this strand on eBay. Thank you ALL, SO MUCH! I would have probably wasted a lot of $$. I have read all of the seller's negative feedback, andI can see that it is a scam. WOW!!!!!!!! eBay is really FULL of this fraud!!! What a bunch of scammers!
 
Pearls in China is like the gold rush in California in the early days. Everyone is rushing in to sell pearls, or to get a pond and grow pearls.

The pearl fraud on eBay is rampant, but as long as it brings in listing revenue, and no large pearl organization starts a campaign to stop it, the fraud will contine and eBay will reap the rewards.

I was in Shanghai recently and I went through several pearl retail shops to see what was happening. On Nanjing street (a famous tourist shopping area) there is a building with over 100 retail pearl dealers. I found the asking prices to be much higher than what I would sell my pearls for in the US.

At one little shop I looked at a pink 9-10mm necklace that was marginal near round good luster and medium blemish. The strand was also badly matched, with one pearl larger than the others, and set off center.

The Shanghai retail price should have been around $80. I was there with my supplier, and we began to discuss price with the retail salesman. He was very agressive and told me this was a natural pearl, not dyed, highest quality, and he was selling it at 50% discount just for me. The price for me was only $680.

We asked him what he meant by natural and he said they were natural sea water pearls. I told him they looked like freshwater pearls. He said yes he didn't mean to say sea water. Again, what is natural mean. He said it means the pearl is not nucleated. (That means no bead nuclei, only tissue). I don't think he knew what natural actually meant. To him it meant no bead nuclei. (That could be what some of the eBay sellers are using the term to mean - in error - whether purposely or not)

Then he said "since you know something about pearls I'll give you a bigger discount. You can have these for $480. In the meantime he had scratched the dye off a dyed black pearl to show me what happens to a dyed pearl, and scratched this pearl with a knife to show me that the pink color would not scratch off.

We were tiring of the game and his agressive persistance, and told him no thanks. In the process of trying to leave, he came down in more increments to $300, crying that this is below his cost.

This necklace would probably sell for about $250 in the US, if the strand were better matched. So the tourists in Shanghai are being taken just like the eBayers (I'll call them bottom fishers) who don't pay attention to the negative feedback.

Bill
 
Chinese Akoya sellers on Ebay 100% across the board call their Akoyas "Japanese" Akoyas. This is blatant fraud, right?

What can be done on an individual basis until an organization that takes up ebay pearl fraud comes into being?

I have, in the past, written to sellers when I knew they were wrong about something they were advertising. It takes about 2 clicks to get to an email to the seller.

Maybe we could think up a sort of form letter for the purpose.

I see another thread called the Ebay education thread with steps to remember when buying on ebay.

ie
check out the seller feedback before buying, If it is less than 99.8% out of 1000 sales, read the most recent negative ones. For 99.8 and better, check the negative if it is recent, otherwise you will have a lot of pages if it was over 6 months ago.

check out the shipping. $100 for shipping or more that $20 a pound from China, is a ripoff.

Checkout the return policy for restocking fees.

Make sure you have a return address before buying! Return addresses from China can be in Chinese and not discernible to non-Chinese reading people. After you complain, you might not get one anyway.

Beyond that- checkout the picture of the pearls carefully. Even send a link over here so folks can check it out for you.

I do not understand why Chinese sellers choose dishonesty so often, if ebay is a sample. They could instead talk about how much better and less expensive Chinese Akoyas are than Japanese and develop their own mystique. They would be developing the market for Chinese products instead of trading on the Japanese mystique.

You experts on this forum who belong to the Acronyms for jewels organizations- why not write letters to the editor of your organization's newsletter and ask them to take a position against the rampant fraud over there?

An official in glda or gia or agta might contact top ebay ownership directly and educate them about the fraud. The "Japanese" akoyas, if nothing else. Though I hear that some Japanese akoyas were bought in China. Why not call them all "Chinese akoya" if that is what they are.
 
Caitlin Williams said:
I do not understand why Chinese sellers choose dishonesty so often, if ebay is a sample. They could instead talk about how much better and less expensive Chinese Akoyas are than Japanese and develop their own mystique. They would be developing the market for Chinese products instead of trading on the Japanese mystique.
Click to expand...

but then they wouldn't be able to quote ridiculously high "retail prices" for their jewelry and claim to be selling them at a huge discount, thus duping more people into buying their inferior product in the belief that they're getting a good deal. also, developing the chinese market is a long-term proposition; these frauds are after short-term profit.
 
Mike

You are very eloquent.

Since these sellers are short term anyway, I'd like help to think up a few boots in the booty for them and hasten their departures- afer all, it will only be aiding gravity........

I am motivated to go over there and check out how to contact ebay themselves with my concerns that there is no organization that can help them determine fraudulant pearl auctions.
 
Caitlin,

One way to start is if you see a description that is obviously false so that eBay can recognize it is false, then begin to report the individual auctions to eBay using their reporting procedure.

Writing to the individuals is an exercise in futility, in my opinion.

The Chinese pearl sales on eBay will continue to grow as more and more people there gain internet access, and the problem will become worse. What is equally as frightening is that some with more resources will begin opening internet stores and operate in the same manner as those on eBay.

Pearls de Tahiti is the organization that most likely is best positioned to begin complaining to eBay, because of the dyed black fw pearls being passed off as Tahitian. Some of the Tahitian pearl sellers on the forum may be able to contact them and send them urls to these fraudulent auctions, to see if they will contact eBay. Its certainly in their best interest to protect the Tahitian pearl market.

Bill
 
Very few of those sellers venture on to the Internet and start up Websites. It is much more difficult for them to do. People tend to research Websites and it is hard to hide when you are visible to the entire world.
I only know of one large Website that I feel is being intentionally dishonest in its descriptions. I have written a letter to the JVC. Online sellers MUST keep an eye out for these types of Sites as it hurts every honest sellers reputation. eBay is simply so over run, if all dishonest sellers were removed the pearls category would drop from 100,000 listing to about 100.
 
I visited eBay yesterday. It is possible to complain only about individual auctions, not entire the category of fake pearls as a broad issue.

I do not think ebay can be approached online, which is why I suggested that a representative of a jewelry organization contact them in person. Being from SF, I remember dimly relatives who used to know Ebay's founder's wife before the ebay founders became gazillionaires. Afterwards, they moved up socially, but they are stillin SF. Anyway, my point is that there is a human behind the ebay behometh. Time for humans to make points to humans.

I did write to Lucky Haisun Pearls who claimed some fw black were natural color. I told him he was misrepresenting them because every expert knows that is no such thing as black fw pearls. He took it off his claims immediately!
Now he just has high prices for 2nd rate stuff.
 
Mikimoto Pearls

Mikimoto Pearls

I am looking to sell a strand of Mikimotos I know to be genuine, my father brought them back from Japan. He was stationed there years ago when he was in the Navy. Dishonest people are killing me as far a price goes. They are 7mm beautiful with a genuine M hallmark on the clasp. Can anyone help me with where to sell them?

Marya
 
There are a few people selling actual Mikimoto on eBay, and from the looks of it, they are actually selling:
http://search.ebay.com//search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=mikimoto+pearl+necklace

There are a lot that are just using "Mikimoto" in the title to attract traffic, and the usual "Mikimoto Quality" which are the regular scam artists. I think you could sell them on eBay, but a lot depends on what price you want to get for the strand. Mikimoto has several qualities, and several brands. Some of the lower qualities and brands may not be as valuable. You can buy a Mikimoto strand for under $1000.

Do you have the original documentation? This always goes a long way when attempting to sell. An appraisal may help as well, but with all the bogus "gem lab certs" on eBay this may not help much...
 
Mikimoto Pearls

Mikimoto Pearls

I do not know where the original documents are. Both my parents are deceased. I do have the documents to their wedding band set though, go figure. I do know, however, that they were purchased in the late 40's to early 50's. He was there around WW2 and was stationed there for 7 years, so by doing the math and knowing he had them for some time while he was there because they were originally bought for a Japanese woman he was married to there, I am sure they are of a nice quality. They are VERY consistant in size and color. Knowing they are at least 50 years old, they are still the same creamy color they were when I was just a girl. The clasp is white gold and has the tiny pearl on it. I took them to a jeweler to be restrung ( I stayed while he did it, plus their reputation is exceptional ) and he did comment on the quality, I did not however have the extra money for him to give me a written appraisal at the time and did not want to leave the pearls overnight.
 
It sounds like a very nice strand. I would suggest not selling it on eBay. If you have a true, high-quality, vintage Mikimoto, it will be difficult to sell at value.
Have you thought of consignment? There are jewelers who sell these types of pieces and most brick and mortar stores deal in consignment and memo.
 
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