7 Tips To Buy Quality Pearls And Pearl Jewelry:

Buying quality pearls and pearl jewelry is as important as buying any other types of jewelry items. One needs to know few useful tips that can help you get the right type of jewelry at right price.

Unlike diamonds that are evaluated on four factors: Color, Cut, Clarity and Carat popularly known as 4 Cs among diamond jewelers, pearls are graded from A to AAA depending upon the followings key factors:                              

1.Pearl luster - a combination of surface brilliance and inner glow. A very good luster means it has higher pearl value.

2.Pearl Size - Pearls are commonly measured in millimeters (mm) in their diameter. Large size pearls carry higher prices. Even 1 mm makes the difference. 80 % of the pearls sold in international market are between 6mm to 8mm. Small sizes often preferred by young girls.

3. Pearl Nacre - The iridescent internal layer of a mollusk shell. It is a natural substance that pearl oysters secrete to protect their sensitive flesh. The thin nacre is very prone to peeling and chipping whereas thicker layer means good high nacre and obviously will command higher price.

4.Pearl Surface - Outer surface should be absolutely clean and shining. That means no blemishes on the surface. Higher quality of pearls have mirror like finish and without any blemishes on its surface.

5.Pearl Color - Body color or Surface color. Most irradiated or dyed pearls have surface colors. The natural pearl colors are white, black, champagne, green, gray, aqua and gold. Again within each category there are common overtones. White pearls with rose overtones look great especially on fair skin and the cream or the golden overtones look fabulous on darker complexions. Most important is woman's own personal taste and preference.

6.Pearl Shape - The perfect round shape pearls command higher price than near or off round shape. Pearl jewelry is not restricted to round shape pearls only and other shapes like tear drop, pear, potato, coin and irregular baroque shape pearls are equally popular for variety of reasons.

7. Price - Finally the price. There are four types of pearls; Freshwater pearls, Akoya Seawater pearls, Tahitian Pearls and South Sea pearls. Each of these types comes with different price tags. The most affordable are freshwater and then comes the akoya.