Xiang Yang picked up the black pearl and looked at it carefully.
Oval pearls are not the best quality black pearls, nor are they very big. Most importantly, they do not have dazzling jewels on them.
Xiang Yang was immediately disappointed. This was a black pearl that had passed its expiration date.
The main components of pearls are calcium carbonate and water. Calcium carbonate makes the surface of pearls shiny and radiant.
But calcium carbonate has a lifespan. It will slowly decrease over time until it finally loses its luster and loses its luster and lustre, and it no longer has the function of making jewellery.
After finding a black pearl, Xiang Yang searched the surroundings more carefully.
Pearls contain a lot of amino acids, trace elements and vitamins, which can not only be made into precious jewelry, but also ground into powder for medicine. Medicines made from pearl powder can not only beautify and whiten the skin, but also treat nasopharyngeal cancer, uterine cancer, scalds and burns, and many other injuries.
Black pearls were so rare that no matter how carefully Xiang Yang searched, he was unable to pick a second one.
But Xiang Yang found a lot of ordinary white, light yellow, and pink pearls, and the most valuable one was a dark green pearl the size of a pigeon egg. The whole pearl was round and radiated a noble and precious aura.
This pure natural green pearl is far from comparable to the artificially cultivated freshwater green pearls.
In terms of shape, artificially cultivated pearls may be more rounded than natural pearls, and they are more round after they are formed. On the contrary, natural pearls have a poor roundness in appearance.
However, the structure and price of cultured pearls are completely different from those of natural pearls.
The core of artificially cultivated pearls is artificially made. There is a core when the beads are strung. Although the surface is very beautiful, it is not consistent inside and out. The skin is not smooth where it falls off, and some even have nest skin. The pearl structure is relatively loose.
The core of natural pearls is natural quartz sand or other substances. After they are formed, there is no core. The inside and outside are consistent. The pearl body is compact, delicate and moist. The pearl body is almost translucent, but it is actually opaque.
There are also subtle differences in color between natural pearls and artificially cultured pearls.
Natural pearls have a delicate texture, soft luster and very high transparency. Some of the best natural pearls are even translucent. Cultured pearls do not have a strong luster, often have small bags on the surface and have very low transparency.
An artificially cultivated green pearl the size of a pigeon egg can be polished and made into jewelry worth about one thousand yuan. If it is matched with gold or platinum to make a necklace, its value can be about 20,000 to 30,000 yuan.
Pure natural green pearls are extremely rare, and are even generally considered by outsiders to be artificially cultivated varieties. There are no truly natural green pearls in nature.
Because the quantity is extremely rare, the price is very expensive.
A natural green pearl the size of a little finger is dozens of times more expensive than an artificially cultivated green pearl of the same size. The price of a pigeon egg-sized pearl can be more than a hundred times higher. If the shape of the green pearl is round or beautiful enough, the price can go up even higher.
The green pearl that Xiang Yang found was deep and transparent in color, and shaped like a pigeon egg. It did not require much polishing to be made into jewelry. If it was sold on the jewelry market, its value would definitely be more than 100,000 yuan.
As for those ordinary white pearls and pink pearls, they are not very valuable. The small ones can only be ground into pearl powder, and the larger ones are worth dozens of yuan each. Only those with a diameter of more than 6mm can be worth hundreds of yuan each.
Although he did not find the most valuable black pearls and gold pearls, or the legendary red pearls, he was already very satisfied to get a green pearl necklace the size of a pigeon egg.
He swam back to where the fishing boat was and touched the heads of the two humpback whales. Then he checked the straight-shelled Nautilus again in the winch compartment at the bottom of the boat. After making sure that the straight-shelled Nautilus was fine, Xiang Yang climbed onto the deck.
Most of the crew on the deck were watching a few old sailors playing golden flowers.
When Xiang Yang climbed onto the deck, Chen Qing was laughing. "Haha, I have three of them. If the bet wasn't capped at ten dollars, I would have won all your pants in this one bet."
"What are you so proud of? You just won ten dollars from me. I will win it back next time." Zhou Wang rolled his eyes.
"Deal the cards later, the captain is back." Xu Fang held Chen Qingsheng's hand and said.
"Are you still playing?" Xiang Yang said with a smile.
"Xiao Yang, you've been down there for so long and you only managed to catch so little?" He Mingde pointed at the slightly bulging net bag on Xiang Yang's waist and asked in confusion.
Xiang Chen lit a cigarette and said with a smile: "Brother Yang, you went down to play, right? There are a lot of swimming crabs down there. Almost all of us who went down to the sea caught more than 30 kilograms."
Except for a few old crew members who felt that constant diving was not good for their health and were unwilling to go overseas, almost all the young crew members on the ship went to sea, and everyone gained a lot.
Xiang Yang had been down there the longest. The crew members were just discussing whether Xiang Yang looked down on swimming crabs and went to catch lobsters. But now they saw that the net bag didn't look like it contained lobsters at all. It wasn't even stretched out. The mesh threads were so stuck together that it was impossible to see what was inside.
Xiang Yang pulled down the net bag, took out a handful of pearls from it, showed them to everyone, and said with a smile: "There's no other way. These pearls are really hard to find. I've been looking for so long and only found about a pound or so. It's not as fast as catching swimming crabs." As for the swimming crabs that were first in the net bag, Xiang Yang let them go.
"What?"
Fang Youqun uttered something extremely unstandard English, his eyes widened.
Chen Qingsheng stood up from the deck with the cards in his hand, and suddenly felt that poker was no longer fun.
"Oh my God, how much can so many pearls sell for? White, pink, green, colorful ones, damn, there's even a black one." He Mingde stared at the pearls in Xiang Yang's hand with his eyes wide open.
All the crew members on the ship looked at Xiang Yang as if they had seen a ghost.
They knew about pearls and had looked for them, but natural pearls are only formed when invasive clams invade into shellfish. Except in some special environments, it is difficult to form large-scale pearl production areas. Pearls are not so easy to find.
Xiang Yang smiled secretly in his heart. This was the case when he had hidden the green pearl as big as a pigeon egg. If he took out the green pearl as big as a pigeon egg, he didn't know how shocked these people would be.
"They are all very common pearls and few of them are valuable. This black pearl is very rare, but unfortunately it has lost its luster now." Xiang Yang stuffed a handful of pearls back into the net bag, leaving only the black pearl to play with.