93. Pearls

Summary

The Economics of Everyday Things: Episode 93 – Pearls

Released May 26, 2025 | Host: Zachary Crockett | Produced by Freakonomics Network

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Introduction

In Episode 93 of The Economics of Everyday Things, host Zachary Crockett delves into the intricate world of pearls—exploring their journey from ocean depths to elegant adornments. This episode uncovers the economic dynamics of pearl cultivation, the challenges faced by pearl farmers, and the entrepreneurial ventures that bring these gems to consumers.

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The Accidental Entrepreneur: Jeremy Shepherd’s Pearl Journey

The episode begins with the compelling story of Jeremy Shepherd, a former flight attendant whose serendipitous purchase of pearls ignited a successful business career.

Jeremy Shepherd [01:13]: "I went to buy a strand of pearls for my girlfriend back home. Long story short, the pearls were appraised at about $600 and I think I had paid about $25 for it."

Shepherd’s initial investment was modest, but recognizing an opportunity, he reinvested and expanded his pearl acquisitions dramatically.

Jeremy Shepherd [01:55]: "I cashed my paycheck, I went to the bank, I took all the cash I could out of my credit cards... I went home with about $3,000 of pearls in my bag."

Selling these pearls on eBay more than doubled his investment, marking the beginning of PearlParadise.com, Shepherd’s online pearl retail empire.

Jeremy Shepherd [14:42]: "We have tens of thousands of strands, possibly a million pearls. We've got a vault in Los Angeles that's 1300 cubic feet and it's completely filled with pearls."

Today, PearlParadise.com generates substantial revenue by offering a vast selection of pearls directly to consumers, minimizing traditional jewelry store markups.

Jeremy Shepherd [15:30]: "The lowest markup we go is right around 15%. It depends on the product."

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Understanding the Pearl Market

The global pearl market exceeds $10 billion annually, with a steady rise in demand. Shepherd emphasizes the importance of luster in determining a pearl's value—a factor that hinges on the oyster’s health.

Jeremy Shepherd [04:29]: "The most important factor is always going to be luster. If all factors are equal, size determines the value. But luster is really that inner glow that gives pearls their beauty."

Unlike diamonds or sapphires, pearls are organic gemstones formed by living organisms, primarily oysters. The surface luster of a pearl results from microscopic crystalline layers that reflect light, enhancing its aesthetic appeal.

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The Art and Science of Pearl Farming

James Brown, owner of Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm in Western Australia, provides an insider’s perspective on the complexities of pearl cultivation.

James Brown [05:22]: "We've been running and operating for 79 years."

The pearl formation process begins when an oyster secretes nacre around an irritant. However, natural pearls are exceedingly rare—with estimates suggesting one natural pearl per 10,000 oysters.

James Brown [05:53]: "You'll be lucky to get one natural pearl out of every 10,000 pearl oysters."

To address this scarcity, the industry shifted towards cultured pearls thanks to Kokichi Mikimoto’s pioneering techniques in the early 20th century. Today, cultured pearls dominate the market, yet producing flawless specimens remains a challenge.

James Brown [06:55]: "There are so few perfect pearls, probably like somewhere in the order of four or five perfect round pearls in every thousand pearls that you actually harvest."

Cultivating quality pearls involves meticulous seeding, where desirable characteristics from superior oysters are grafted into host oysters to encourage pearl growth. This method enhances the chances of achieving consistent quality and size.

James Brown [07:59]: "We take one oyster that has all of the characteristics of the color and lustre on its shell that we want our pearls to have... create that cultured pearl."

Despite advancements, environmental factors such as climate change, typhoons, and marine diseases pose significant threats to pearl farms, complicating the cultivation process and affecting supply stability.

James Brown [19:44]: "The onset of climate change impacts... our farms are not as productive. It's extraordinarily hard to produce fine quality pearls."

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Economic Realities of Pearl Farming

Pearl farming is capital-intensive, requiring substantial investments in infrastructure and technology. Farmers like James Brown face high operational costs, including heavy equipment and government leasing fees for ocean territories.

James Brown [09:23]: "The anchors that we use on these long lines are like 10 tons of concrete."

Moreover, the unpredictable nature of pearl yields means that even large-scale farms often struggle with profitability. Successful harvests are rare, and fluctuations in market demand can drastically impact a farmer’s revenue.

James Brown [10:36]: "In Australia, not many pearl farmers have been profitable over the last 10 to 15 years."

Shepherd highlights the difficulties in creating artificial scarcity to stabilize prices, as ongoing operations require consistent production.

Jeremy Shepherd [20:59]: "Farms are ongoing operations. You've got to keep it running, otherwise you're bankrupt."

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The Business of PearlParadise.com

Transitioning from farming to retail, Shepherd’s PearlParadise.com capitalizes on offering a vast inventory at competitive prices by eliminating traditional retail markups.

Jeremy Shepherd [15:36]: "At PearlParadise.com, we call it a vip experience, but it stands for very important pearls."

The business thrives on trust and quality assurance, as there is no standardized grading system for pearls. Shepherd and his wife meticulously select pearls based on their personal standards for shape, luster, and surface quality, often sifting through thousands to find the best specimens.

Jeremy Shepherd [16:23]: "There is no internationally recognized grading system for pearl... we created our own standards."

High-value transactions, such as multi-thousand-dollar necklaces, are managed through exclusive virtual appointments, emphasizing personalized service and authenticity.

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Influences on Pearl Demand

Market demand for pearls can be volatile and influenced by factors beyond natural supply constraints. A notable example occurred in 2023 when a Chinese influencer's endorsement drastically increased demand.

Jeremy Shepherd [21:05]: "A Chinese influencer named Ni Ni posted a series of selfies while wearing a strand of Tahitian pearls... prices were skyrocketing, up to 10x what we had just seen a few months prior."

Such spikes in demand can create temporary surges in prices, but as Shepherd notes, maintaining sustainable demand growth remains a challenge.

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Conclusion: Navigating the Pearl Economy

The pearl industry exemplifies the delicate balance between natural beauty and economic viability. From the unpredictable yields of oyster farmers to the strategic retail approaches of entrepreneurs like Jeremy Shepherd, the journey of a pearl is as complex as it is enchanting. As environmental and economic pressures continue to shape the market, stakeholders must adapt to ensure the enduring allure and accessibility of these timeless gems.

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Notable Quotes:

• "If all factors are equal, size determines the value. But luster is really that inner glow that gives pearls their beauty." — Jeremy Shepherd [04:29]

• "You'll be lucky to get one natural pearl out of every 10,000 pearl oysters." — James Brown [05:53]

• "There are so few perfect pearls... that you actually harvest." — James Brown [06:55]

• "We've got a vault in Los Angeles that's 1300 cubic feet and it's completely filled with pearls." — Jeremy Shepherd [14:42]

• "In Australia, not many pearl farmers have been profitable over the last 10 to 15 years." — James Brown [10:36]

• "A Chinese influencer... prices were skyrocketing, up to 10x what we had just seen a few months prior." — Jeremy Shepherd [21:05]

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This episode was produced by Morgan Levy and Sarah Lilly, mixed by Jeremy Johnston, with assistance from Daniel Moritz Raps.

Transcript

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[Zachary Crockett]

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[Zachary Crockett]

Back in the 1990s, while working as a flight attendant, Jeremy shepherd made an impulsive purchase that would change the course of his life.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

I was on layover in China and there is a market there, the Hongtao Shi Tang in Beijing. It's a market where flight attendants used to go to buy anything from knockoff purses to clothing. There was an entire floor of pearls and not knowing anything about jewelry or really being much of a shopper, I went to buy a strand of pearls for my girlfriend back home. Long story short, the pearls were appraised at about $600 and I think I had paid about $25 for it.

[Zachary Crockett]

Shepard sensed an opportunity and on his next flight to China he decided to go all in.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

I cashed my paycheck, I went to the bank, I took all the cash I could out of my credit cards and I had another flight attendant friend of mine write a letter in Chinese to the same person that I had purchased the first strand from and it said I want to buy exactly what I bought last time, as many of them as I can, and and I went home with about $3,000 of pearls in my bag.

[Zachary Crockett]

He sold all of these pearls on ebay, more than doubling his investment. And so began his second career as a pearl entrepreneur.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

I started importing pearls on layovers and on my days off. I went on the jump seat, flew to China, stayed at the Crew Hotel, collected pearls, and I brought back suitcases of pearls every month. Within a couple of months, you know, my pearl business was outpacing the flight attendant jobs.

[Zachary Crockett]

Significantly, today, Shepard is the CEO of PearlParadise.com, a large online retailer of pearls based in the US last year, we.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

Broke $6 million just in direct retail, and our biggest year ever was over $20 million.

[Zachary Crockett]

For retailers like shepherd, pearls are a relatively easy sell. The global market for them is more than $10 billion a year and is only on the rise. But for the oyster farmers who cultivate them, there's no guarantee of a big payday.

[James Brown]

The night before you start harvest, it's very difficult to get any sleep. I can assure you of that, because as a farmer, you've invested millions of dol into these crops, and you really don't know what you're going to get.

[Zachary Crockett]

For the Freakonomics radio network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, pearls. For many of us, the simple strand like the one Jeremy shepherd first bought his girlfriend is still our touchstone for pearls today.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

You know, your grandmother's pearls, this all came from these pearls being imported into the US after World War II. And that's when the US really got to know Japanese Akoya pearls. GI started bringing in the small graduated strands.

[Zachary Crockett]

Shepard says that today's pearls come in a range of sizes and colors. But one characteristic stands out.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

The most important factor is always going to be luster. If all factors are equal, size determines the value. But luster is really that inner glow that gives pearls their beauty.

[Zachary Crockett]

The surface of a pearl is composed of microscopic crystals that overlap almost like fish scales. When the crystals are symmetrical, light bounces off of them to create a beautiful sheen. And better luster means richer colors. Pearls are gemstones, but unlike diamonds and sapphires, they're made by a living organism, usually an oyster. And luster depends on the health of the oyster.

[James Brown]

We often say happy oysters, great pearls.

[Zachary Crockett]

That's James Brown, owner of Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm in Western Australia. He's the third generation proprietor of the.

[James Brown]

Family business we have been running and operating for 79 years.

[Zachary Crockett]

The Pearl process begins when a foreign body, the parasite or an irritant, burrows into an oyster shell. That's when the oyster's defense systems kick in and encapsulate the intruder in nacre, the material we know as mother of pearl. Over time, thousands of layers of nacre build up to form a pearl. This is not something that happens to every oyster.

[James Brown]

You'll be lucky to get one natural pearl out of every 10,000 pearl oysters. No one's really crunched those numbers, but you imagine it's 5 to 10 to 15,000 pearl oyster to get one natural pearl. Very, very rare.

[Zachary Crockett]

For centuries, natural pearls were harvested by divers who would open up thousands of oysters to find one pearl. Their rarity made them valuable, and they became a fixture in the wardrobes of royal figures from Cleopatra to Marie Antoinette. But the market changed at the turn of the 20th century, when a Japanese pearl farmer named Kokichi Mikimoto developed a repeatable method for encouraging oysters to create pearls. The pearl industry could create a reliable supply of so called cultured pearls rather than rely on chance. Today, the pearl industry is dominated by pearl farms like Cygnet Bay. They collectively produce millions of cultured pearls every year. But it's still an imperfect art.

[James Brown]

There are so few perfect pearls, probably like somewhere in the order of four or five perfect round pearls in every thousand pearls that you actually harvest.

[Zachary Crockett]

Brown's farm is headquartered along the remote Kimberley coast in Western Australia. He harvests South Sea cultured pearls, which grow in oysters called Pinctada maxima.

[James Brown]

They produce the largest, most valuable pearl.

[Zachary Crockett]

Brown says that occasionally they can get over 20 millimeters wide. And how much would one of those go for?

[James Brown]

If it's a perfectly round white pearl on the open market, it would be worth anywhere between 20 and $100,000 wholesale, retail, at least double, if not more. The pricing is very, very complicated when you consider all the different factors that go into grading a pearl.

[Zachary Crockett]

The process of creating cultured pearls on a farm like Cygnet Bay starts with seeding the oysters.

[James Brown]

What we do is we take one oyster that has all of the characteristics of the color and lustre on its shell that we want our pearls to have, and we use it to create small graft pieces that we then graft into a whole range of host oysters. And then the host oyster is responsible for some characteristics of the pearl, like the size and shape and so on. But it's the graft tissue that grows around what we insert next to it, that bead and create that cultured pearl.

[Zachary Crockett]

Inserting a small bead into the oyster produces a rounder pearl and speeds up the process. But it still takes a while.

[James Brown]

It's generally two years from the seeding.

[Zachary Crockett]

To harvest that perfect $100,000 pearl could take even longer to reach 20 millimeters, the ideal size for a South Sea pearl. That increases the time investment into a single pearl. And there are many costs that eat into the pearl farmer's margins. Today, most Australian pearl farms are far offshore, and that requires millions of dollars worth of heavy equipment.

[James Brown]

The anchors that we use on these long lines are like 10 tons of concrete.

[Zachary Crockett]

And most farms also have to pay the government a lease for the specific areas of the sea they operate in.

[James Brown]

There's this balancing act between really high quality, high productive leases that produce just premium crops, but they are extraordinarily expensive to operate versus other sort of lower cost areas to operate which will not produce the same type of really high luster or good growth rate and such.

[Zachary Crockett]

But every oyster is a lottery ticket.

[James Brown]

To get a perfect pearl is really super exciting. Or even to get a particularly large pearl, even if it's not perfect, that's also super exciting. Those are the types of pearls that a technician would often let out a bit of a hoot, a bit of a stop work moment, like, wow, look at that. And then the flip side is if your crops pour and you're sitting there pulling out a whole range of suboptimal pearls, you feel like kind of curling up in the corner and crying yourself to sleep.

[Zachary Crockett]

So after all this time, money, energy and planning, what do the financial realities of a pearl harvest look like?

[James Brown]

Let's say we fish and seed 100,000 shell. You would hope that after two years you might get one pearl from every two shell. And then out of that 50,000 crop, you would hope that one to five, every thousand was a perfect round pearl. So it sounds impressive to say, oh yeah, I've got, you know, 300,000 oysters on the farm. That doesn't actually mean you've got 300,000 pearls. The reality is in Australia, not many pearl farmers have been profitable over the last 10 to 15 years.

[Zachary Crockett]

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[Jeremy Shepherd]

What set us apart was that we had basically everything. You know, you'd go to a jewelry store and you would maybe find one or two strands of Akoya or freshwater. We have tens of thousands of strands, possibly a million pearls. We've got a vault in Los Angeles that's 1300 cubic feet and it's completely filled with pearls.

[Zachary Crockett]

Shepherd buys all these pearls from farmers like James Brown or brokers and wholesalers in Japan, China, Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Tahiti. At a jewelry store, the markup on a pearl necklace can be as high as 300%. But Pearl paradise sells them directly to consumers, which results in lower prices.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

The lowest markup we go is right around 15%. It depends on the product.

[Zachary Crockett]

Shepherd sells more freshwater pearls than any other kind, but the largest portion of his revenue comes from Akoya pearls, the grandmother kind that first became popular in the U.S. after World War II. But some months, shepherd will get most of his revenue from one or two big sales.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

We call it a vip experience, but it stands for very important pearls.

[Zachary Crockett]

Shepherd keeps some of his most valuable items off the website, like an individual Pearl selling for $70,000 and a necklace priced at 1.2 million. These he sells to clients via virtual appointments. Buying pearls relies completely on trust.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

There is no internationally recognized grading system for pearl. So what that means is you cannot comparison shop by grade like you can with diamonds, because it's meaningless.

[Zachary Crockett]

Instead, Shepherd's entire business is dependent on his eye for quality. He and his wife, who's also a professional pearl buyer, travel to international pearl shows where wholesalers sell their pearls in something called hanks.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

Hanks are, say, five to 10 strands that the dealer or processor or farmer even has deemed all to be of the same value. Now, that's subjective, and we strongly disagree with them every time.

[Zachary Crockett]

Even though there isn't a universal grading system, shepherd has created his own standards for the pearls he's purchasing and selling.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

Say we need to find something like one of our most popular sizes, a 7.5 to 8 millimeter white freshwater strand. Well, we are very specific in our grading and what we're looking for. You know, a specific shape, specific surface grade, specific luster. And so we may select out of a thousand strands, maybe 50. And those are all chosen first, typically by me, and then my wife does the second once over. She's got even stronger eyes than I do.

[Zachary Crockett]

The most expensive necklace on pearlparadise.com is priced at around $140,000.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

It's a golden South Sea necklace that is about 19 millimeters gem quality, Extraordinarily rare and very difficult to put together. It takes years and years to put something like that together.

[Zachary Crockett]

Perfect pearls are exceedingly rare. Large perfect pearls are even rarer. But the holy grail is a set of perfect matching pearls, Say two for a pair of earrings or dozens for a necklace.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

We consider anything at about 15 millimeters to be a substantial large size. Now, when you get above that size, unless the quality is not there, the pearls are sold individually as loose. You may go to an auction and have thousands and thousands of pearls to choose from, Lots of various sizes and qualities, and there may be one lot that has three pearls, and it's got a 16.5, a 17.2, and an 18.1 or something like that. And collecting those types of pearls to make a strand is something that takes a long time.

[Zachary Crockett]

Pearl matching doesn't just happen at the high end, like with that golden South Sea necklace, it happens with every pearl necklace sold.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

In order for us to create strands, we need, you know, 50 kilos, 60 kilos to do this. And so it requires us to go to many different people and many different processors in order to find the volume that we need.

[Zachary Crockett]

For pearl farmers like James Brown, cultivating these large, perfectly round pearls has become harder over time, largely due to factors outside of their control.

[James Brown]

We went through a period where we were getting those quite consistently as a family after we'd spent 50 years really honing our skills. And then the last 15 years have been extraordinarily difficult with the onset of climate change impacts. So our farms are not as productive. And there's much more variation these days. It's extraordinarily hard to produce fine quality pearls.

[Zachary Crockett]

Global pearl supplies can be affected by typhoons, disease and pollution, because unlike other gemstones, a pearl crop depends on the health of a living organism. Pearl farmers also can't escape macroeconomic forces.

[James Brown]

Say I'm in the middle of ramping up, which we are doing now. Let's say the market then suddenly takes a downturn. We would probably do what we did 10, 15 years ago. Instead of taking that crop to market, we'd probably just put it on the safe and we'd start to sort of reduce the biomass of the farm. How can we create more value out of a smaller crop, that kind of thing. So you end up with basically a safe full of pearls.

[Zachary Crockett]

But Jeremy Shepard says creating artificial scarcity is not a practical approach for most pearl farmers.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

Now, during COVID prices were unsustainable for farmers. And when that does happen, the lucky farmers might put their pearls into a vault and not sell them. But that's not reality for most because farms are ongoing operations. You're not producing just one year and you're done. You've got pearls in the water constantly and you've got to keep it running, otherwise you're bankrupt.

[Zachary Crockett]

While warming temperatures or marine disease can have a significant effect on the supply of pearls, a single celebrity can have a similar effect on demand. In 2023, a Chinese influencer named Ni Ni posted a series of selfies while wearing a strand of Tahitian pearls. The impact was felt most acutely at a jewelry and gem fair in Hong Kong that happened shortly afterward.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

The entire show basically got shut down in September. Not because there wasn't any business, because you couldn't even get inside. The big Tahitian pearl auction at the end of the week was canceled because one Chinese buyer offered a premium for the entire thing. That's never happened before. Prices were skyrocketing. I mean, it was up to 10x what we had just seen a few months prior. We could have brought our entire Pearl paradise inventory to that show and sold it all. All probably above retail and would have sold out. Hindsight's 2020 right.

[Zachary Crockett]

For the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. This episode was produced by Morgan Levy and Sarah Lilly and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz Raps.

[Jeremy Shepherd]

And our office is Charlton Heston's old office, believe it or not. And all the windows are bulletproof. The security is pretty amazing.

[Narrator]

The Freakonomics radio network.

[Zachary Crockett]

The hidden side of everything.

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[Zachary Crockett]

Going up.

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[Jeremy Shepherd]

Every day our world gets a little more connected, but a little further apart. But then there are moments that remind us to be more human.

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