When I first got here, cheap akoyas were all the rage. (Not here on this forum, but everywhere else) Hardly anyone was buying Tahitians or SSP at the time. With the akoyas, one could get a strand that had a micro-thin layer of nacre for a really cheap price. Thing was they peeled in just a few months or dried and cracked off the bead.
I came here knowing nothing about pearls except the prejudice my family raised me with- cultured pearls were fake pearls. Not only that, my husband's family were deep into the cultured akoyas and bought strands from the 1930's to the 50's. When MiL died in 2004 or so, most of her ropes had cracked and chipped skins, even thought they were very fine (expensive) pearls when new. That gave me a time frame of 60 years wear out time for even good quality akoyas. These pearls were worn a lot, if not everyday. They were not in great shape and it was hard to find replacement pearls in matching colors and they were very thin-skinned.
Not only were the Cultured Freshwater pearls (CFWP) solid nacre, they looked more like real pearls, rarely being round. I started stating my preference early on. I either influenced others or they already agreed. One of the loudest supporters of natural pearls over cultured was the Rana of Frogville. If people were not convinced by me, they certainly were by the Z-ster. She actually introduced the forum to the term "pearl-plated beads" and used it often in the 11 months she posted here. Since it was a description of the akoyas so commonly available then- it was perfect. Well, the Rana left under a cloud- she had actually sold some of her CFWP as Placuna imbricata, siberian trans-grafts, pteria sterna and several other false terms. That is fraud, folks, and she fell swiftly out of favor leaving only her 2,000 boastful, snotty and lying posts to speak for her. I managed to discard 500 of them, but that still leaves, 1,500 posts of her braggadocio!
Since she left, Tahitians have risen swiftly. They were pretty much guaranteed to have much thicker nacre. So did the SSP. They might wear out, but it would take far longer than the akoyas because their dip into the pearl oyster was more than twice as thick as the average akoya, 4x as thick as the cheapest akoya.
I have mostly mellowed out regarding the Tahitians and the SSP and vendors here only grow and/or buy thicker-nacre on the akoyas. Some pearls, like the Kasumi and the Sea of Cortez are virtually unobtainable without beads. The economics make beaded pearls available in much less time and at far lower prices.
Still, at the bottom of my heart, I love my antique natural p radiatas. They are small, 1/2mm up to 7mm. about 8" of them are very round for natural pearls. They have a lot of iridescence, more than any akoyas I have seen. There are places of wear where they were not knotted for years, but the wear just reveals many micro-thin layers of nacre that increase the iridescence.
I went through a klonk stage- who doesn't? (Klonks=12mm plus) But now I am back to preferring strands of 7mm and less. The CFWPearls have a higher percentage of best the most perfect when they are in the 5-7mm range and they are not all that much in demand compared to their rarity, as the larger ones are.
Just since I joined here, the techniques in producing cultured pearls have advanced an exponential amount. The colors are deeper and more varied. Freshwater pearls, esp. are producing commercial numbers of round pearls with incredible luster and colors, virtually perfect skins.Techniques have improved for producing tissue nucleating and bead nuking- or even mud nuking. I must expand my vision of what pearls are and where they can go. And also keep an eye on the salt-water production of tissue-nuked round pearls or keshi passing as natural pearls.
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