In May this year the Tahiti pearl entrepreneur Robert Wan held his annual Black Tahitian Pearl auction in Kobe, Japan, and the results were reflective of the current economic conditions where only 232 lots of the 808 lots sold. A great variety of dark colour pearls were available along with lighter shades, silver and the desirable peacock colour.
Pearls of all shapes, sizes, colour and quality were for offer. The high light of the auction was the "Mirror of Nature" lot consisting of 2 peacock colour gem quality 15mm and 16mm round pearls that sold for an amazing US$5,174 each (US$870g). Generally though the top quality large round pearls were selling for around US$30g and for baroque, keishi, button, and oval shapes were selling for as low as Us$2g for the lower quality. The average sale price was US$7.77g and medium sale price was US$16g with total sales of 207.31kg for US$1,61m.
The auction was held in the euro currency and once conversion to US$ was completed the prices being achieved were fairly reasonable. I myself was successful in biding on 3 small lots of AA1 medium quality pearls with a size of 12mm to 14mm and total weight almost 1kg.
