The cheapest fresh-water pearls in the market to-day are the finest. The pearlers along the streams of the west and south will no longer part with the pearls they find to the speculators at the old time prices. In fact they generally want much more than they are worth and often get more than the speculator can afford to pay to ensure a profit when he comes to sell them in the business centres.
But these fishers know little of the merits and value of the finer qualities. They do not yet realize the great difference in value which accrues as the pearl exceeds the average of luster, color, or perfection, consequently the speculator can often buy a very fine pearl for little more than he would have to pay for an ordinary pearl and though he knows that the piece is worth much more than he has paid, and tries to get as nearly what it is worth as he can, both his judgment and disposition to sell are affected by the low price he has paid and the chances are that he too in turn will sell it at much less than its relative value as compared with the ordinary market price of poor or medium quality goods.
THE MARCHIONESS OF LONDONDERRY
This condition will gradually change. As in the past the fisher learned more and more of the market value of ordinary pearls, so also he will learn to know the price of exceptional pieces and to know them when he has them. Even now, speculators hold fine large pearls at high prices because of the ready sale for them in Europe.
It is difficult to compare the price of pearls in ancient times with that of to-day. We make much finer and closer assortments and gradations of quality and the business now is on a more distinctly commercial basis. People generally are better informed and more critical; they are not influenced by wonder, sentiment, superstition and the "Arabian Nights" atmosphere, as much as formerly.
The Orient is not as strange and far away as it was. In the old times, jewellers could and undoubtedly did take advantage of the awe with which things from the mysterious East were regarded, and of the general ignorance, to obtain large sums for very ordinary if not inferior gems. Even in these days, many are influenced more by the source from whence they come than by a critical knowledge of the gems they buy. Some, who would not buy the most beautiful fresh-water pearl, will pay an exorbitant price for one poorer and less valuable because it is oriental. La Pellegrina in the hands of an obscure dealer would be passed unnoticed by many who would be enraptured by a more ordinary gem from a jeweller or person of renown.
It is presumable therefore that prejudice was more influential when ignorance prevailed to a greater extent than now. John Spruce of Edinburgh in 1705 complained that he could not sell a necklace or pendant of fine Scotch pearls in Scotland. He says "the generality seek for oriental pearls because farther fetched," and continues: "At this very day I can show some of our own Scots pearls as fine, more hard and transparent than any oriental. It is true that the oriental can be easier matched, because they are all of a yellow water, yet foreigners covet Scots pearls."
The price in those days was regulated by general appearance and loosely with regard to weight, rather than by definite assortment and the exact system of reckoning by the multiple of the weight as now, for he says, "If a Scotch pearl be of a fine transparent color and perfectly round and of any great bigness, it may be worth 15 to 50 rix dollars, yea I have given 100 rix dollars (about $82.00 U. S.) for one."