WEALTH IN A DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20922, 29 September 1939, Page 2

WEALTH IN A DAY

ROMANCE OF PEARLS THE AUSTRALIAN FIELD Powanga Savage, a diver on one of the native-owned boats of Badu Island, in Torres Straits, will no longer need to live in his little grass hut under the palm fronds, because he brought up a pearl 4-sth by 3sth of an inch, weighing 32 carats. It will return him enough for his simple needs for the rest of his life if the market is right, for pearl buying is a tricky business, needing hard heads and eternal vigilance. No Standard of Value The bulk of Australia’s harvest is marketed in February of each year in Broome, Darwin, and Thursday Island—in luggar cabins, beach stores, shabby hotel bedrooms, bars, street corners, native shacks—and weeks of bargaining pass before the haul is translated into hard cash. There is no set standard of value Prices are governed by demand and fashion. Colour preferences run with nationalities. Swarthy Latin ladies like their pearls with a yellowish tinge to complement their complexions. The fair-skinned beauties of northern Europe favour only the purest white. The fresh-complex-ioned North Americans prefer pink. Australia provides the whites and yellows, the Philippines and Arabia the pinks and whites, New Guinea and the Solomons the purest whites, and Tahitian waters alone are likely to yield the precious black gems. Matching demands give a price picture like a crazy graph. The pearl is unique among precious stones in that it cannot be altered in shape, weight or colour by cutting, but the peari doctor, a man of strange skill, may improve a discoloured pearl and improve its value—or he may not. Skinning is one of the trade’s most exciting gambles. Strings of pearls may lie for years in a jeweller’s safe, waiting for a perfect match, for each gem in a fine collection must grade precisely in all its features. Fashion is capricious. Some years button shapes are in, in others peardrops or spherical solitaires. So the buyer goes forth with a host of particular instructions, and these sometimes distort prices out of all proportion. Buying Points All buying is done by day since all pearls are good at night. Precise- scales weigh them. They are placed on white cotton in obliquely falling daylight to gauge colour and texture and on black velvet for lustre, shape, and symmetry. Finally, they are held between finger and thumb for the ultimate test, the search for the unmistakable translucent ring about one-sixth the way from the circumference. This characteristic of the true pearl can never be simulated. Then the game begins. Beside it, poker is as candid as a billboard. A Broome fleet owner asked £lO,000 for a 117-grain pearl. The buyer offered £6OOO and the deal was off. The owner sent the pearl to London, where discolouration by a purplish pigment was found. Price, £3500 Since a buyer’s licence costs between £2O and £SO, a considerable amount of illicit buying goes on. A group of legitimate buyers trapped a “snide” by obtaining an excellent paste pearl and bribing a native to pretend he had stolen it. The “snide” thought the native too stupid to be cheating, so he bought it at night for £2OO. A pearl double the size of Australia’s largest was coaxed from a blister by an excited Darwin luggerowner. It looked like £20,000 worth, but a worm had eaten into its heart and made it worthless. The next shell opened yielded a glorious 53grain pear-drop worth £2OOO. Pearling is a romantic business, but the money is made above water.