Author: Pete
Location: Bora Bora
In my limited French, this is what I have come to understand about Tahitian pearls. Apparently, there is a pearl-governing body in French Polynesia that buys all of the pearls from the little farms around the Tahitian islands regardless of quality and only permits the perfect ones to be sold for export. As far as I can tell they crush any with imperfections and dump them back into the sea! It makes me cringe! Sounds like this is designed to maintain high quality and a sparkling reputation for exported pearls. The little farms don’t care; they’re still being paid for all their pearls, but it’s the jewelers that are making the profit from the deal. We did, however, ferret out some exceptions.
Few are interested in trying to sell flawed pearls. It took us four months to track down a source! And then it was all hush-hush, doing deals in back rooms, shifty eyes and whispers. I think the imperfect pearls are the most interesting. Some look like inverted Saturn, others like snowglobes, or tear drops. All different colors, lusters, and pretty good size too. We felt like true pirates, smuggling out handfuls of contraband treasure stowed away below decks. Flew them back to the states disguised in an M&M bag. Tricksters.
