How to tell difference between freshwater & saltwater pearls? The easiest way to tell the difference between freshwater and saltwater pearls is by their color. Freshwater pearls are typically white, off-white, or cream in color, while saltwater pearls come in a variety of colors including blue, green, black, and pink.
Cultured Saltwater pearls are more expensive than cultured freshwater pearls because the saltwater oyster only typically only produces one pearl at a time. Freshwater mussels can produce up to 30 pearls at a time. This -- combined with the higher labor costs in Japan -- creates a more expensive pearl.
Natural Saltwater Pearls come from the Pinctada radiata and Pinctada margaritifera varieties and are native to the Arabian Gulf. These natural pearls are incredibly rare and their value can vary significantly from US$500 to over US$2,000 per pearl.
There are two primary shape categories that all pearls fall into: traditional and baroque. Traditional pearls are round while baroque pearls are virtually anything else. Some prefer baroque pearls for their unique shapes, although traditional pearls are generally more valuable.
The Vinegar Test
A real pearl will dissolve in vinegar or show erosion where the vinegar drop meets its surface. This is because of the chemical reaction between the acid in the vinegar and calcium carbonate, the primary chemical that a real pearl is made of.
The qualities that determine the overall value of a natural or cultured pearl or a piece of pearl jewelry are size, shape, color, luster, surface quality, nacre quality, and—for jewelry with two or more pearls—matching.
Extraordinarily rare, naturally beautiful, unmatched in size. Australian South Sea pearls are grown inside the largest and rarest pearl-producing oyster, the Pinctada Maxima. They are highly sought after as the pearls produced are amongst the world's largest and most valuable.
Naturally colored blue pearls are the rarest pearl colors in the world (with one or two exceptions, which we will get to below). The color has existed in pearls for decades, but only recently have naturally colored blue pearls gained popularity in the modern pearl jewelry markets.
The lip determines the pearl color. While the white pearls are also priced by jewelers, the gold pearl variety is the most coveted color. The gold South sea pearl's color can range from creamy white to deep gold, and the darker the color, the more expensive it becomes.
Genuine pearls are shinier than fake pearls. You can measure shine in luster, which is the intensity and softness of a pearl's surface, it generally has to do with how bright and clear a pearl looks. Natural pearls have more shine than artificial ones because they're made from natural materials.
It's pretty much impossible to tell the difference between a natural and cultured pearl by just looking at its outer appearance. The only way to make absolute certain whether a pearl is natural or not is to perform an x-ray of the internal structure of the pearl.
Real pearls vary in weight depending on size and type. Generally, they are light but range from 0.5 to 6 grams. Akoya, South Sea, and Tahitian pearls are heavier than freshwater pearls. Larger pearls will also be heavier than smaller ones of the same type.
Freshwater pearls have no core and are made up entirely of mother-of-pearl – so 98% of these stones are not round but oval, buttoned, drop or baroque in shape. Freshwater pearls are cheaper because they are easier to extract, making sea pearls more valued.
The colour of saltwater pearls depends largely on the type. Akoya pearls tend to have a blue or grey hue, but they are often bleached white as the trend of wearing pure white pearls still continues to this day. Tahitian pearls are known for their dark, iridescent tones, including black, silver, purple and green.
In addition to sand (silica), which can be extremely abrasive, damp salt air, saltwater, and chlorine can be harmful to cultured pearls and gem coral. Water from any source—your shower, a hot tub, lakes and pools—tends to weaken the silken threads that are used to string strands of pearls and coral necklaces.
Perfectly Round pearls are the rarest and most valuable shape there is! Pearl producing mollusks are usually nucleated with spherical bead nuclei (in the hopes that the resulting pearl will be a perfect Round). This round nucleus is inserted into the host mollusk, which then encircles it with a pearl sac.
Scallop pearls are among the rarest pearls in the world. Similar to Melo Melo and conch pearls, scallop pearls are classified as non-nacreous natural pearls. This means that instead of being composed of nacre or aragonite, they are formed from calcite. Scallops, a type of mollusk, form these pearls.
Essentially the better a pearl scores for these 7 standards the higher in value it is and the more complex it was to produce. Some of the world's most expensive pearls are so notoriously difficult to successfully produce and harvest that they are 'rarer than gold'.
Kailis pearls are unlike any other on Earth. Highly sought after, the Australian South Sea pearl is revered as one of the best varieties of pearls in the world. Born from the rare Australian Pinctada Maxima oyster, our Australian South Sea pearls have the thickest nacre and a magnificent lustre, to rival any other.
South Sea pearls are generally much larger than other pearl types and have a unique luster quality – a soft reflection due to the large aragonite platelets that make up the pearl. They also have the thickest average nacre of all cultured pearls. These factors make South Seas both distinctive and valuable.
Saltwater pearls are larger than freshwater pearls, and they come in a narrower range of shapes and colors. They are more expensive than freshwater pearls, but they are also more durable and can be worn in the shower and while swimming.
Pearls with particular brand names will also retain (and even increase) their value over the years; vintage Mikimoto Akoya pearls that still have their original clasp, box and papers to establish provenance are very highly sought after today and continue to fetch premium resale values.
This is because a real pearl has small ridges on its surface. These ridges may not be visible to the naked eye. However, experts and jewelers can check the “natural flaws” in a pearl using a magnifying object. In real pearls, these same ridges can be felt using the teeth.
Today, natural pearls are extremely rare. Only 1 in about 10,000 wild oysters will yield a pearl and of those, only a small percentage achieve the size, shape and colour desirable to the jewellery industry.