Honora and their ring pearls

[Breeze]

I don't mind the ringed pearls as long as they are not to heavily ringed & are big pearls. I couldn't afford perfect pearls in the big sizes I prefer. My favourites of Honora are the rondell pearls though.

The worst string of pearls I ever bought from QVC weren't Honora, must have been their own, They were quite expensive & advertised as BIG pearls which they were & looked amazing on the TV presentation. But the string that I got were just awful! Big, yes,& smooth, but the worst pearls I've ever seen. They just looked like big beads of white chalk, no lustre whatsoever, completely dull & matt, horrible. They went back the same day.

 

[Tinkerbelle]

I've said this on other threads but jewellery is such a personal thing and to my mind the perceived value of the piece is in my own mind. I don't particularly think about how much gold or silver does it have in it, could I get something similar cheaper elsewhere, are these pearls less perfect than those pearls ... I fall in love with pieces and if I fall in love with them and they are a price I am prepared to pay then I would buy.

And that's a really good reason to buy from QVC, because quite frankly if I haven't been wearing a new piece of jewellery pretty much non stop with the first month then its not something that I love. So back it should go ... I'd like to say I stick to that rule but I don't always.

I'm really not sure why ringed pearls appeal to me more than others, but I don't particularly care that in the past they were rejected for their imperfections. As others have said black diamonds and cognac diamonds were originally deemed not worthy of setting into jewellery. Now lots of us love white gold, but its only been in the last 100 years or so that white gold even existed and yellow gold was much more highly prized. I personally love rose gold but there are plenty of jewellers who don't rate rose gold and won't buy rose gold as scrap because of its copper content.

I have a rose gold ring that I inherited from my mum. Its a wide band with a well worn floral pattern and I often wear it. My father in law, now no longer with us, thought it was "a bit of old copper pipe" and would "make your finger go green" ... he was clearly talking out of his pipe as it was recently valued for scrap at £500. I wouldn't part with it for the world. I have its mate in yellow gold which I wear once in a blue moon. I loved the rose gold ring before I had any idea of its value.

Its all horses for courses really. But for me the value is about how I feel about it, not what anyone else thinks or feels or says about its value.

 

[Breeze]

Can someone tell me, please, what the difference is between black diamonds & coal?
They're both carbon aren't they?

 

[Gem Genie]

Not a lot

(Have to write more apparently as the post is too short)