Akoya Pearls at Sale Price Part One

This is part one of a two part series on Akoya Pearls at Sale Price.

Akoya pearls are available at sale prices, especially online. One can see prices dropped from the many hundreds to perhaps a hundred or two. This looks very nice but you do need to be careful and ensure you are actually getting what you pay for.

Going to a jeweler or browsing pearls online is how many people check out pearls. Many sites online promote akoya pearls at massively reduced prices and many are genuine but how can you know? Especially online as you cannot touch or feel the pearls. So later in this two part article we look at how to find out the difference.

First let's look at what an akoya pearl is.

An Akoya Pearl is a Japanese cultivated pearl from the salt water akoya-gai oyster. These are a speciality of Japanese Pearl Farms.

Akoya Pearls were first cultivated in the 1920s and are considered a high quality pearl. They are used for necklaces, earrings, pendants and bracelets as well as in rings. Invariably the setting is of a high quality precious metal such as platinum or 18 karat or more white or yellow gold. This is, of course, one way of checking the authenticity of the pearl. A good quality pearl will not be placed in an inferior, gold plated setting for example.

Akoya pearls generally have fewer blemishes and flaws than other pearls and they have a beautiful deep luster.

As they are cultivated, akoya pearls will be more round and perfectly shaped than other types of pearls. This makes them ideal for necklaces and bracelets where the shape is very important. Having a number of pearls on one string, it is important that the size and shape match well to provide a good quality necklace or bracelet.

Sometimes you can also get akoya pearls at a sale price at an auction, so it is important to know what is genuine and what is not.

In part two at http://allaboutpearls.org we will look at how to ensure you are getting good quality genuine akoya pearls.

End of part one of a two part series on Akoya Pearls at Sale Price.

Permission to use this article is granted provided the link to All About Pearls is included
Michael Moore