What type of pearl necklace should I buy?

I have decided that I want to purchase a nice pearl necklace that will be passed down for generation. I don't know much about good brands or what type of pearl I should look for. Can anyone make any suggestions?

answer
A good pearl should feel gritty or sandy, not smooth. The pearl should also appear fine grained, have minimal flaws, and should be pretty heavy.
Check out this website. It gives you the different kinds of pearls you can buy, a description of them, and basic shape and colors!

Good Luck! I love pearls too! I personally love the classic, round, creamy color pearl, but gray is lovely too!

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AtWKGlDXoxkQfofDwpLBM9UjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20070419065251AAhN4qk
http://www.topearl.com

Pearl: Pure From Sabah, Malaysia

I got pure pearl from Sabah, Malaysia.


















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Definition of a pearl

Definition of a pearl


A black pearl and a shell of the black-lipped pearl oyster

Saltwater pearl oyster farm, Seram, Indonesia

Almost any shelled mollusk can, by natural processes, produce some kind of "pearl" when an irritating microscopic object becomes trapped within the mollusk's mantle folds, but the great majority of these "pearls" are not valued as gemstones. Nacreous pearls, the best-known and most commercially-significant pearls, are primarily produced by two groups of molluscan bivalves or clams. A nacreous pearl is made from layers of nacre, by the same living process as is used in the secretion of the mother of pearl which lines the shell.

A "natural pearl" is one that forms without any human intervention at all, in the wild, and is very rare. Many hundreds of pearl oysters or pearl mussels have to be gathered and opened, and thus killed, in order to find even one wild pearl, and for many centuries that was the only way pearls were obtained. This was the main reason why pearls fetched such extraordinary prices in the past. A cultured pearl, on the other hand, is one that has been formed with human intervention on a pearl farm. The vast majority of pearls on the market today are cultured pearls.

One family of nacreous pearl bivalves, the pearl oysters, lives in the sea while the other, very different group of bivalves live in freshwater; these are the river mussels such as the freshwater pearl mussel. Saltwater pearls can grow in several species of marine pearl oysters in the family Pteriidae. Freshwater pearls grow within certain (but by no means all) species of freshwater mussels in the order Unionida, the families Unionidae and Margaritiferidae.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia