What Makes Golden South Sea Pearls so Valuable?

The Golden-Lip Oyster Pinctada Maxima producers the Natural Golden Color South Sea Pearls.

The pearls take this color from the inside of the oyster, so-called Golden-lip segregates a nacre of this color, creating a pearl inside.

The gold color pearls are mostly from Indonesia and the Philipines, where this type of Pinctada Maxima lives.

The prices of these gold natural color pearls are high because they are available in a lesser amount than white and because demand from China is strong and very much appreciated.

Opulent, luxurious, and best of all, naturally colored, Golden South Sea Pearls are some of the largest and rarest cultured pearls in the world. Ranging in color from pale Champagne to intense 24K golden, the deeper the golden color, the more valuable the pearl.

South Sea Pearls are quite large, and they tend to have very thick nacre. For this reason, not all golden South Sea Pearls are as perfectly spherical as other saltwater pearl varieties. In a typical pearl harvest, there will be a large number of drop pearls, button pearls, baroque pearls, and circle pearls.

The average size is in the 10 to 13 mm range, and some remarkable pearls have been found as large as 20 mm.

Of all the cultured pearl varieties on the market today, South Sea pearls are the undisputed leaders in value. Their large size, combined with the relative scarcity, make them among the most desired as well. A perfect strand of deep golden South Sea Pearls in a large size can sell for more than $100,000.

The Queen of the South Sea Pearls is the Imperial Gold Pearl that is produced only by the Pinctada Maxima oysters living in optimum habitat in Indonesian waters. Indonesian South Sea Pearls have a very distinct appearance due to their unique natural luster that exhibits a gentle inner glow, which is a combination with a subtle reflection of colors.

Imperial Gold color is the rarest of all and the most majestic.

Pearl is an organic “gem”, that is, a gem that comes from a living thing (other examples of organic gems include coral and amber). A pearl is a living gem, and each pearl is a miracle of nature. It is a lustrous concretion (i.e., a rounded mass of compact concentric layers built up around a nucleus) produced by certain bivalve mollusks, including mussels and oysters. The pearl is an abnormal growth resulting from the invasion of the body of the mollusk by foreign matter.

The oyster soothes irritations caused by those external or internal stimuli (such as sand grains, mollusk eggs, parasites, and other foreign particles) by secreting a brownish solution called conchiolin. Conchiolin is a fibrous protein that makes up the inner part of the oyster shell. Over this conchiolin, the oyster coats the invading material with layer upon layer of nacreous material. The conchiolin binds the nacre together. Nacre is the hard pearly internal layer of the oyster shells. It takes thousands of very thin layers of this nacre to make a single pearl.