Precious World of Pearls: South Sea Pearls

The color of a pearl is dictated by the lip of the oyster. For instance, if you take a golden-lipped oyster of the Pingtottamaxilla, it is what produces the golden color. Now the depth of that color is more chance, more random. Will it be a light gold? Will it be yellow? And they can go to almost orange. The gold in South Sea production in recent years has really shifted. You have got incredible pearls coming around the Philippines, just dazzling. They've got a deeper golden color than what you find in other areas. And then you have also a very small production coming out of Burma, the Burmese South Sea pearl. The Burmese pearls seldom even make it to auction for the major distributors. The Japanese market has fallen in love with that pearl so much that they commit to the entire harvest years in advance. So there's very little that comes out of Burma. We've been fortunate to have a little bit of the Burmese South Sea pearl here. Traditionally speaking, a rule of thumb is the Burmese pearl will fetch about double what South Sea pearls will from Australia or the Philippines when they get to market.