With all this recent hub-bub about GIE PDT and the export tax, one cannot help but wonder if everyone on French Polynesia has the good of the industry at heart, or if most are just thinking about favorite numero uno.Nearly every farmer that does not smuggle their garbage pearls out of Tahiti must be sitting on a mountain of what should be calcium carbonate dust by Ministry of Perliculture standards. Or maybe the nacre thickness is good enough, but the pearls have too many rings, they are too small, or just too ugly to be worth the 200pf per gram just to get the little ogre-balls out of the country.
Farmers of French Polynesia, take a lesson from a kimono-wearing, crinkly-faced old man of Japan back in October, 1932. Destroy them all and the value of your product will go up (not to mention the perceived value and quality of the brand). Mikimoto torched 720,000 of his pearls as the world watched. His name was behind his product. He cared about the future of his brand. Don't you see this is what GIE PDT has been trying to do all along? Did you think they thought it up themselves?
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Maybe those ugly pearls are produce by independent pearl farmers who doesn't care about the quality. The best pearls should come from Robert Wan's private atoll.
I don't think those independent pearl farmers would burn their poor quality pearls. And if Robert Wan would do the Kokichi Mikimoto thing then it woudn't make any difference since the others continues to produce poor quality pearls.
If you really want the best pearls then buy pearls from Robert Wan.
That might be partially true. Wan does have good quality pearls. But he is not the only one.
Rumors around Tahiti are that Wan flies his low-grade pearls to the Cooks and sells them as Cook Island pearls instead of destroying them per export law. I cannot confirm that, but I have heard it more than once.
Given the volume of low-grade Tahitians we see at trade shows such as Tucson, somehow a lot of pearls that should not be exported do make it out of the country.
He has his own private plane and he can fly and sell his poorer quality pearls anywhere...
The biggest market for black pearls now should be men. Men can wear all kinds of black pearls. I have seen many men wear a small tiny round akoya pearl on one ear. Many also own black pearl strands, bracelets, chokers or pendant of any pearl shapes.
Cufflinks, tie clifts etc can be made with any pearl colors. Pearls never go out of style and there's nothing to be afraid of. Those pearl farmers in Tahiti refuses to sell their pearls bcoz they want premium prices for their pearls which is not fair since white South Sea pearls and golden South Sea pearls has more beauty and rarity.
Golden South Sea pearls are hot in many countries of Europe who suffer from less sunshine and plenty of snow. They want to see something warm like golden South Sea pearls!
The Service de la Perliculture in FP in charge of controlling exported pearls pays 50pf per gram (within the limit of 10% of the weight of pearls exported) for pearls that don't meet the criteria. And destroys them.
This means that the very bottom of the shelf is destroyed, and farmers stock what's in between (which is still a lot of poor quality pearls).
I am sorry "Pecheur de Perles" and all other guys but the pearls that don"t have the minimum nacre thickness required are not destroyed by the "Service de la Perliculture". These junk pearls are sold locally, for tourists. Its a very tricky system: pearls sold locally, in Moorea, Tahiti, Bora Bora... and almost bought by tourists don't have to be x-rayed when the tourists leave Polynesia.... So what farmers are used to do like this: they xray their own production, the pearls with at least 0.8mm are brought overseas (check up at Service de la Perliculture is ok), and the pearls with less than 0.8 mm of nacre thickness are sold locally. Its a shame, but its like that and everybody knows it here, but not the tourists...
Wow that is allarming anonymous. It means I don't have to go to Tahiti to by pearls but instead buy from here. I once saw a beautiful tahitian black pearl ring set in 18kt white gold beautifully designed for about 200 dollors.
Hey! Wait a minute! Why don't we just "keep" the pearl's quality by placing a moniker like "Thick Nacre" to a Tahitian Pearl that just has 0.5 mm!!! That is a grand idea!!!
OMG!!! It happened already!!!
The problem with the pearl industry is that most of its "leaders" are just greedy, and the rest just follow in their steps.
Mikimoto had dignity. His name was on his pearl but then he had to die...and his "followers" were the greedy lot that rule over the pearl industry.
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