When I was a child and we visited my grandparents in Pennsylvania during summer vacations, we often went to VicMars Seafood restaurant in Scranton, where I became a huge fan of steamed clams. It's not something one buys fresh in Minnesota, so every opportunity I come upon them, I order them. We often harvest them ourselves here in the Sea of Cortez. My dad once brought me home 3 dozen in his briefcase on an airplane. The briefcase itself had to be trashed.
At Jorge's Restaurant in Kino Bay, you can order a plate of 70 steamed clams (Almejas al Vapor) for 70 pesos, about $5.50. Sounds like an awful lot of clams, but they're small. You have to ask for the melted butter (Mantequilla caliente) to dunk them in. The second time I ordered them there, back in 2006, I nearly broke a molar on this:
After realizing it was really quite uniform for a pebble, I thought it might be some kind of pearl. It was sort of dark in there, and it looked black to me. Since I'd heard of black pearls (AKA Jack Sparrow's ship), I put it in my purse intending to Google it later, as I'd thought pearls only came in oysters. But I forgot about it. Three days later on the news, there was a story about a woman in Florida who found a purple pearl in her clams, and it was expected to be worth a LOT of money (I forget how much, MANY many thousands.) I almost had a stroke tearing to get that pearl out of my purse, and sure enough, it was purple. I hollered to Ron "HOLY SHIT! WE'VE BEEN RICH FOR THREE DAYS!"
Much Googling and emailing later, I uncovered these facts:
Clam pearls are called Quahog (pronounced KO-hog) pearls, are NOT truly pearls (only oysters make pearls, that's what I'd remembered) and are always some shade of purple, often shaded from almost white through lilac to purple.
Most sources insist only Atlantic clams make pearls, but I know differently.
They're quite rare, but since that story was on the news, more have been coming out of the woodwork.
They're so rare that there's no market for them yet, no one has set a benchmark for value. A couple of pearls were thought to be auctionable for those "many many thousands" prices, but not yet. Apparently no one wants to go first?
So in 2008 I listed mine on Ebay with a $5000 reserve, just to see, and the highest bid was $104. I put it away. $104 is a good price for something I got free in my dinner, but I decided to bide my time.
A couple of weeks ago someone sold a Quahog pearl on Ebay, very similar to mine, for $545. The market's improving ever-so-slightly.
I think mine is even prettier than that one. It's tiny though, about 6mm and shaped like a fat M&M.
Here's the Ebay one that sold for $545.
Ebay Pearl
There's another one currently listed on Ebay that's set into a ring. He wants $15,000, down from $18,000 a few weeks ago. It's sort of ugly...
Ebay Pearl Ring
In 2000, a jeweler in Rhode Island bought an old brooch at an antique store for $14 because he thought it might be gold. It turned out it was gold, PLUS it had a huge (14mm) Quahog pearl, and a smaller one. This brooch toured the world, was thought to be worth between $250,000 and a million, but eventually dropped off the grid. No market yet.
So I've renewed my efforts at finding out how the market for Quahog Pearls is progressing.
And I order Almejas al Vapor every time I go to Jorge's.
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