10 Ways to Tell a Real Pearl

Tired and True ways to tell a REAL PEARL from a FAKE ONE!

Pearls have always been one of women’s favorite jewelry. In the market there is a wide range of pearl jewelry, and it is often difficult for consumers to distinguish the real pearls from the fake ones.

Here are 10 simple rules:

1. Observation
   Pearls are unique. When you look at each pearl on a necklace, the color, shape, size and luster the pearls are not all exactly the same. Because they have been made by nature, each pearl has its individual “personality.” Fake pearls usually have the same size and shape.
2. Shape
   True pearls do not have a particularly neat shape. Naturally grown pearls are very difficult to have a necklace all the same shapes, especially those that are rounded or pearls that is particularly uniform in size. The perfect pearl is so rare, that’s why perfect pearls with big size and good luster usually sell for hundreds of thousand dollars.
3. Touch
   Even when the weather is hot, true pearls have a sense of cool. Plastic beads generally feel warm. Real pearls give a sense of cool when they are in your hand, while imitation pearls have a sticky feeling when rolling and sliding. If the imitation pearls are pure glass beads, the weight is usually heavier than real pearls, but if imitation beads are waxed glass, it will only have about half of the weight of real pearls.If you hold one pearl in each hand (could be from the same necklace) and rub them against each other, there is a sense of an uneven feeling (jerky rough feel) If the pearls are real, then a pearl powder will be produced when you rub them together. But if the pearls are fake, they will have a slip or smooth surface.NOTE: don’t be afraid to rub the pearls together, it will not harm your real pearls. Just blow away the powder and your pearls will still have their usual luster.
4. Sound
   When you shake and knock an entire string of pearls, the real pearls will have a softer more comfortable sound and the fakes will sound thin or tinny. If you bite a real pearl and scrape it slightly with your teeth, you can feel and hear the sandy, grainy surface of the pearl. But a fake pearl will be slippery with no sound. And if the fake is plastic, sometime your teeth will make depressions in the pearl.
5. Magnifier observation.
   Use 5x or 10x magnifying glass to observe the pearl surface, if they are real pearls (including natural pearl and cultured pearls), the surface seems to be grown as grain, like the wind over the dunes; but, if you see rugged eggshell surface, then they are imitation pearls.

The above 5 ways described are generally used for pearl identification and will not damage your pearls. However, the following 5 ways is for Professionals only.

6. Knife
   With a knife or scissors scraping the surface of the real pearl, it will only fall a number of powder; and in the artificial coated beads scraping, blowing a layer of film will expose the true face of the glass; if uncoated glass beads scraping action, it just gives a smooth feeling.
7. Fire
   When you mild burn the pearls with a lighter, surface seems to be intact, still shiny, no odor; when burning time is extended to two minutes or more, there would be a popping sound, shedding phenomenon occurs when the layer of beads with a fingernail scratch. Plastic imitation pearls mild burning smell bad, pearls lose their luster, and burning fire occurs, while the surface is like a black pot, washed off the surface, exposing the bead core.
8. Bounce test
   Drop the pearl from 60 cm height on a piece of glass, the rebound height should around 35 cm. Under the same test conditions, imitation pearls’ rebound height is much worse.
9. Chemical solution
   Put the pearl into acetone solution, glorious should be as usual. Imitation pearls will lose total luster within one minute under the same conditions. Pearl’s relative density is about 2.73, and can dissolve in hydrochloric acid, but no reaction in case of imitation pearls.
10. Polarizer observation
    Pearls are almost all light or semi-transparent; while imitation pearls have a transparent layer and do not have a uniform torus.

What are real pearls?

The real pearls are grown in the ocean or freshwater shellfish, suffering (or artificial implants) body and foreign objects friction stimulation, the fluid secreted by the body to foreign material forms layers of pearls wrapped ball formed body.

There are two categories of pearls: Natural pearls and cultured pearls.

The cultured pearl market is broken down into saltwater cultured pearls and freshwater cultured pearls. About 99% of the pearls on the market today are cultured freshwater pearls.

In terms of color, there are natural colored pearls and artificially colored pearls.

The biggest difference between saltwater pearls and freshwater pearls is the structure: whether natural or cultured, freshwater pearls are nuclear-free (except for Edison pearls), all the ingredients are by nacre composition, so most of the pearl powders used today are made of freshwater pearls.

The saltwater pearls are nucleated, which generally consists of nuclear mussel shells trotters ground, covering the surface nacre thickness 0.1-0.3 mm. Therefore, the saltwater pearl powder would consist of a small majority of nacre shell powder, which is not good for medicinal or cosmetic products. If you need 100% saltwater pearl powder, you first must remove the core, so the cost is very high and the process is not easy. That’s also why saltwater pearl powders are more expensive than freshwater ones.

Because saltwater pearls always have a kernel, most of their regular shapes are round. As they have a shiny crystal clear center, they are easy to be used for ornaments or jewelry. Only a small part of the irregular shape saltwater pearls are used to make pearl powder, so the whole production quantity is far lower than freshwater pearls.

Saltwater pearl production is very low, as generally three mother of pearl shells produce only one pearl. As you can imagine, freshwater pearl production is relatively high. You can easily find 6-8 freshwater pearls inside the mother shell. That’s part of the reason why the price of saltwater pearls is so much higher than freshwater pearls. In the past, most freshwater pearls are rice shaped or irregular shaped with a low shiny effect, so there is only a small part of freshwater pearls that will be used to make ornaments or jewelry.

What are fake pearls?

The so-called fake pearls, refers to all or part of the artificial production of imitations and alternatives; because of their strong simulation to real pearls, these fakes often cause difficult true chaos. There are fake pearls such as waxed glass beads; solid glass beads or glass beads coated fake pearls.

Most fake pearls on the market today are made in the following five ways:

1. Waxed glass beads imitation – that is full of paraffin in the hollow of opalescent glass round pellets. Such imitation bead density, generally less than 1.5 g / mm3, the weigh is very light, and can be distinguished easily.
2. Solid glass beads imitation – Coming milky solid glass balls soaked in the “pearl of semen” together. Drilling observed at 15 times the magnifying glass, you could see a very thin layer of “pearl of semen”. If you struck with a needle it will fall into pieces, but not the small scale-like powder.
3. Plastic beads coated imitation – that is plated with a thin layer “pearl of semen” in milky white plastic balls, the surface was coated with a magnifying glass like pimples evenly distributed, as natural pearls and cultured pearls as real smooth paste. If you struck with a needle, not fine powder would be found.
4. Imitation pearl beads – because it is made of polished shells with nacre on thick, very round, has a similar pearl luster, its density has no big difference from real pearls. The best way to identify it is to put it before a strong light source; under the light transmittance you can often see obvious parallel strips, which are traces of pearl powder into a layer.
5. Shell powder synthetic beads – by definition, it is made with shell (black shells removed) after adding powdered adhesive inside.
   
   Blog Source: http://timelesspearl.com/10-ways-to-tell-a-real-pearl/

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