Do Jewelry Stores Buy Pearls
However, if your pearl necklace, earrings, bracelet or rings' setting or other materials may be valuable. If your pearl jewelry has a clasp, chain, setting or accents that are gold, silver, platinum, diamond or gemstone, CashforGoldUSA will buy those metals or gemstones.
do jewelry stores buy pearls
The value of pearls can vary significantly depending whether they are natural or cultured, how lustrous they are, the size, the shape, the color, and the origin. Generally speaking, larger, rounder, and more lustrous pearls of natural origin will be worth more than smaller, misshapen, and duller pearls, as well as those that were cultivated. The rarer the color of pearl, the more it will also likely be worth.
If you are selling loose pearls, you can ignore this. But if you are selling a pearl ring, necklace, bracelet, brooch, earrings, or another piece of pearl jewelry, you also need to consider your setting. What metal is your jewelry made out of? Silver, gold, platinum? Does it contain other precious gemstones, such as diamonds, sapphires, rubies, etc.?
Especially in cases where your jewelry contains lower-quality pearls, the actual setting might be worth more than the pearl itself. In these cases, you might be better served selling your pearl jewelry to CashforGoldUSA.
You can sell your pearls in many of the same venues as you might sell any other type of jewelry, such as gold, silver, diamonds, etc. The most common buyers for pearl jewelry include local companies and online businesses.
Most people want to know: How much can I sell my pearls for? Pearls can vary significantly in value, from as low as $50 for common pearls of low quality to tens of thousands of dollars for particularly rare or beautiful specimens.
Again, color plays an outsized role in the value of your pearl. The most common pearls will be a shade of white. Black, silver, golden and gray pearls are far less common than white pearls, but are still relatively common. The rarest of pearls include those which are naturally blue, pink, green, or purple.
If your old pearl jewelry has especially rare pearls or is a brand like Tiffany or Cartier, you may be able to sell your pearl jewelry, as well as if you have a pearl of significant size and quality. Otherwise, old pearls are typically hard to sell and do not hold much value.
Pearls are harder to sell than other precious materials for several reasons. There are many pearl necklaces flooding the market, and pearls are an organic material, so unlike diamonds, gold and other gemstones and metals, they deteriorate over time.
In some cases, the gold clasp or beads on the pearl necklace will sell for a higher price than the pearls themselves. In these cases, a local jeweler, cash for gold or gold exchange, or an online gold buyer are a good bet. Use CashforGoldUSA's online gold calculator to get the melt value:
Mikimoto is a specialty retailer that sells high end pearls exclusively. The top 1% of Mikimoto pearls (typically costing $20,000+ per piece) are untouched in the industry. But not all their pearls reach these lofty quality standards.
In fact, Mikimoto will often take one or two extremely high end pieces and ship them from store to store to show off. The rest of their pearls are high quality, but are closely matched by more affordable brands.
At the end of the day, the two safest places to purchase pearls are at a dedicated online boutique, or a luxury pearl retailer. Other stores may offer solid quality pearls, but they usually come with sky-high markups and are hit-or-miss in terms of quality.
But when it is time to unload them, finding a trustworthy buyer can be challenging. As a seller, you want your pieces to sell for a good price. If you're looking to get cash for your pearls, these five marketplaces are the best for finding reputable buyers:
They have a team of experts who will evaluate your pearls and give you an estimate of what they're worth. They also have a vast network of buyers, so you'll likely get a good price for your pearls if you sell them through Sotheby's.
I Do Now I Don't is a website that allows people to sell their unwanted engagement and wedding rings. The site offers a convenient way for people to get rid of jewelry they no longer want, and it also provides an opportunity for bargain-hunters to snag some great deals.
Pearls are found in various colors, depending on the type of oyster they come from and the water conditions where they are grown. The most popular color of a pearl is white, but pearls can also be cream-colored, yellow, pink, or even black.
The most valuable pearls are large and perfectly round with a rich, creamy color. Pearls with blemishes or an irregular shape are less valuable. However, even imperfect pearls can be beautiful and therefore still fetch a high price.
Pearls are a classic jewelry staple that can add elegance to any outfit. But with the wide range of prices on the market, it can be challenging to know if you're getting a good deal on a genuine pearl.
Genuine pearls will have some imperfections on their surface, as they are formed by an oyster coating a small piece of sand or other irritants. Fake pearls, on the other hand, are often perfectly round and smooth.
Despite their huge price difference, both cultured and natural pearls are real pearls. They are grown from pearl-bearing oysters in either saltwater or freshwater. The pearl formation process is exactly the same for both natural and cultured pearls.
The only difference between the two lies in the external irritant that causes a pearl to form inside the oyster shell. In the case of natural pearls, this external intruder can be a grain of sand or a parasite, and the pearl is formed completely without any human assistance. Whereas for cultured pearls, the irritant is either a piece of tissue from another oyster or a bead that is placed by pearl farmers to encourage the growth of a pearl.
Now you can see why natural pearls are potentially more valuable than cultured pearls. This is because the occurrence of natural pearls is much rarer than cultured pearls. Almost all real pearls you see today are cultured.
Regardless of how pearls are formed, whether natural or cultured, most pearls harvested have an average to low quality. Fine quality pearls are very rare. This is largely due to the nature of pearl growth inside the oyster. The oyster secretes nacre slowly to coat the intruder layers after layers. It is the same substance that makes mother-of-pearl, the shiny surface on the inner side of the shell. As an organic gem, these layers of nacre are not always evenly distributed to form a tight structure. Hence the quality varies drastically. In other words, most natural pearls, if found, rarely have qualities that worth a fortune.
Generally speaking, saltwater pearls cost more than freshwater pearls. This is because saltwater pearl-bearing oysters can only grow 1 pearl (or 2 at the most in the case of Akoya) while freshwater pearl oysters can yield up to 50 pearls in one growth cycle.
Below is a general pearl price guide that demonstrates what price ranges you can typically expect to find for each pearl type in 2022. Please note that we intentionally keep these ranges fairly broad to include pearls of different sizes, quality bands and jewellery types. As such, this should only be viewed as a general guideline. Each jeweller sets their own prices and they do vary.
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.
All pearls have a main bodycolour, whether cultured or natural. But not all have overtone or orient. Pink overtone on white pearls are usually more valuable than those without. Pink to purple and blue overtones on dark green grey Tahitian black pearls are extremely rare.
Tahitian pearls can come in a wide range of deep colours such as black, grey, green and more. The common colours for freshwater pearls are white, peach, pink and lavender. Akoya pearls come in the shades of white and silver. South Sea pearls are only available in white, silver, champagne and golden.
Try to look for the presence of overtone or orient the next time you look for fine quality pearls. And be very careful with those that are artificially coloured to mimic some of the high value colours mentioned above. Pearls with dye treatments are worth less than those with natural colours.
Without a doubt, the most valuable shape for a pearl is perfectly round regardless of what kind of pearl it is. Now this is tricky. Because to be considered as a perfectly round pearl, the variance in diameter measured from several directions needs to be no more than 2%. This is the rarest shape in both cultured and natural pearls.
One thing you might not realise is that saltwater pearls like Akoya, South Sea and Tahitian are more likely to be round than freshwater pearls. Why? Because in saltwater pearls a round bead is inserted to encourage pearl to grow into a round shape whereas a piece of tissue is used in freshwater pearl cultivation. Now you can see - it is much rarer for a natural pearl to form a perfectly round shape than its cultured counterpart.
However, it is not true when valuating pearls of different varieties. As shown in the image below, you can easily see the difference in pearl sizes when you compare the size of the Tahitian oyster shell against that of the akoya pearl-bearing oyster.
For round pearls, the size is determined by measuring the diameter of a drilled pearl perpendicular to the drill hole. For pearls of any other shapes, the size is made up of measurements for lengths, widths or depths. Pearl sizes are usually expressed in millimetres and rounded to the nearest 0.5mm.
In the case of saltwater cultured pearls, bead nuclei are used in the pearl cultivation process. Therefore, those with thin nacre usually diminish in value. They often have poor lustre and are not durable. 041b061a72