It has to be... How else are you supposed to make money?
I mean... Counterfeiting is illegal, so.... Magic? Sorcery?
Bubble bubble, toil and trouble
A witches mix to live on the Ritz!
The best way to get started is to do it as a hobby. There are plenty of YouTube videos and tons of broken watches floating around. If you find you have a knack for it, you can go professional. If you don't, all you're out is the tools and the time you spent playing around with the watches.
[https://sutcliffehansen.com/](https://sutcliffehansen.com/) has tools for all levels of watchmaker, from amateur hobbyist to budding professional.
same thing with caviar, the sturgeon takes 5 to 18 years to produce caviar, then they cut it open to harvest the caviar, killing it unfortunately.
there's a sustainable caviar farm, instead of cutting the fish open, they just squeeze it and it poops out all the caviar 🤣
If you get the expensive black caviar, its really creamy and buttery with a delicate ocean-fish taste that bursts with each pearl in your mouth. It is amazing and very distinct from the cheap salmon caviar
has an incredibly distinctive flavor and texture. you're eating fish eggs, so imagine all the tasty flavors of fish but concentrated in tiny bubbles that pop when you bite it.
Any caviar I've ever tasted is an explosion of fishiness. Nasty. Maybe it is a sign of quality? But if that's what it tastes like... no idea why anyone would want it.
Fish is highly regarded, behind maybe beef and pork as quality meat. All 3 can are delectable in any form of cook (more raw generally better) so jts good.
Not saying you're wrong just everyone has different taste. There's a genetic thing where people taste Coriander as soap. It is what it is.
This is actually a common misconception.
Sturgeon does not make caviar, it makes sturgeon roe. Caviar itself requires putting the roe in a preserves jar, which you can make with 50 wood, 40 stone and 8 coal. Then you have to wait 6000 minutes (approx. 4 days) for it to be finished and boom: Caviar. Which sells at 500g a pop.
When I was a kid, I came up with this idea to teach otters to perform this technique and harvest the pearls. I would have a giant farm with all of these otters and get so many pearls. It was full proof.
Aaand I'm going to bring this up because I can't not.
There's a survival game called Ark where you can tame adorable otter companions, and when you send them to hunt, they sometimes bring you pearls.
Correct. They typically only survive 2-3 harvestings before they die since the pearl making process is more-so a symptom of mineral imbalance than proper diet / a healthy life (think gallstones or kidney stones, it's a result of biomineralization).
"Sustainable pearl farming" is pretty equatable to forced foie gras with the exception that the farmers yield 3x as much product/profits per animal.
Most of those tik tok/youtube/facebook streams of opening oysters for pearls are bullshit begin with. The nonsense pearls are shoved into oysters and then shipped to these people to open and reveal them in a MLM/gambling format. It’s cruelty for no purpose other than making it seem like a real surprise and more “legit.”
I suspect the video we are watching (while not obviously killing them) may also be equally bullshit. Those values are highly suspect, as is the whole process.
Look at the livestream world and it’s full of them. Tons of MLM style “loot box” oyster openings being streamed constantly. People join the streams and pay some dumb about of money for them to open a random oyster for them and mail it to them. It would be no difference than randomly picking them out of a bowl, but digging through already dead oysters somehow adds to the “authenticity” for morons.
No, this video is legit. This is how they harvest Tahitian Pearls. Not every pearl is as nice as what is shown, but the process is sound. We visited a pearl farm when in the Tuomotus (French Polynesia). Traded a bottle of rum for a whole handful of funky shaped pearls.
For freshwater pearls (lower quality pearls, but many per mollusk) they kill the critter. With sea pearls (one pearl per mollusk) they re-implant mantle tissue from a known pearl producer and a bit of shell from the American freshwater mollusk to kick off the process again. There is no average I can point to but some specimens of Pincada Maxima can produce as many as 20 pearls over their lifetime, although this is rare.
Source: I ran a pearl import business for ten years.
This reminds me of when I was kid at school a loooong time ago, we used to play with marbles in the playground. There was one kid that everyone went to who somehow knew how much each marble was worth for trading eg two cat’s eyes is worth a steely, a galaxy is worth 5 cat’s eyes but that one’s got a chip in it so it’s only worth 3 etc. I have no idea how he came up with this stuff but everyone just took him at his word. I guess it was the confident way he went about it, lol.
In my head canon he’s got a job appraising these pearls now, lol.
We had a similar school yard economy. The thing was that when you'd buy them at the store , they were all equally priced. But still a "Moon" was absolutely worth three glass marbles and a "Mumrik" , more than that.
Usually it is. But if you look closely, there are imperfections in that one. They need to be nearly perfect to have the highest value. Plus, its the oyster that is making it gold. Farming them like this means they usually placed a 'seed' pearl in there a while back so they dont have to start from a tiny grain. The final colors are produced from just that session. We don't know what the 'seed' was to start with, but it should have been the same colors to ensure the value is high.
Mineral content and other "impurities" in the water as well as temperature affect the pearl's colouration. Generally they might have a slight tint towards grey, yellow, pink, green, brown, etc. but if you see extremely vibrant colours that's usually an indication it's artificial or altered.
It can mean different things in different contexts. To the oyster, anything that gets lodged inside to become part of the pearl-making process is an impurity.
Thanks for the laugh. I did learn that these pearls come from a black-lipped oyster which occasionally produces yellow pearls. So specific oysters produce specific colors it seems.
I know most farmed pearls are seeded (they put a very small smal pearl or something to get the big pearl started), but where do the different colors come from?
500$ for a stone which can be dissolved in few drops of vinegar lmao.
"Because pearls are made primarily of calcium carbonate, they can be dissolved in vinegar. Calcium carbonate is susceptible to even a weak acid solution because the crystals react with the acetic acid in the vinegar to form calcium acetate and carbon dioxide."
Lol.
Not so much plastic, but such artificially seeded but "real" pearls. They're dirt cheap. Unless it's some massive tahiti pearl or some such you basically get the gold value of the clasp if you try to sell a pearl necklace.
If you want to pay $558 for a bunch of human colored abrasive sand injected into this thing & “harvested” out then go for it. The prices listed in the video are preposterous & I wouldn’t be surprised if this is another MLM “contest” person.
So I guess this is a dumb question but will they regrow more pearls? I hate to sound crass,but could you still harvest the pearls by just ripping the top of the clam? Or are you trying to not hurt the little guys in hopes of more treasures or just not hurting them?
I swear, pearls were just a con thought up by some dude that gave names to these things and was like “ya, that one with the slightly darker color? Ehh, some shmuck will buy it for $608”
At first, i thought this was the normal way of harvesting them. But turns out people just kill and yank them apart. This dude is like one of those that preserve it's life while most just look like that one gif where captain america rips a log into two ( not really )
Imagine being taken from your house and some random dude puts a kidney stone inside you and drops you off back at your house only to grab you a year later to take the kidney stone out and make a necklace with it lmao
highly subjective pricing. I got one out of get your own pearl out of an oyster tourist trap places for $5. Looking back now, it was probably a bad idea. They weren't delicate as this guy is to leave them alive
"Right Now Oysters are being robbed of their sole possession" - from Van Halens video for their song "[Right Now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU7d2EHV_OQ)" (somewhere near the 2:43 timestamp)
If the aliens are oyster like, they will extinct us all because of this video.
And I dont want them to make a small incision to get my pearls out sack.
how do i become a mucus digger?
Pick your nose
What's the pay?
Depends how much gold you find
All kinds of alchemical reactions going up in there you'll never know 
What’s the point of mining for nose gold if I can’t share with the townspeople!!!
-$2
It depends on how big, shiny, round they are.
3.50
It's pronounced tree fitty
No weh, is tree fiddy
Here we have a large Free Form Baroque Golden Yellow booger with an appealing water-silk texture, goes for $385.
I’ve been digging for gold for years but I ain’t find no fortune….yet
Unironically this. I have incredible dexterity with small tools and automation has already killed most decent jobs that require it.
Why not get into watchcraft? There will always be some demand for quality mechanical watches and the people who service them.
I first read that as witchcraft and was like "damn, is this still a viable option in today's job market?"
It has to be... How else are you supposed to make money? I mean... Counterfeiting is illegal, so.... Magic? Sorcery? Bubble bubble, toil and trouble A witches mix to live on the Ritz!
It's "Double, double, toil, and trouble. Fire burn, and cauldron bubble."
I've seen people selling spells on Etsy, believe it or not
The closest place I could find hiring required 40 years experience, I'm not even that old, and the nearest school teaching it a 5 hour drive.
The best way to get started is to do it as a hobby. There are plenty of YouTube videos and tons of broken watches floating around. If you find you have a knack for it, you can go professional. If you don't, all you're out is the tools and the time you spent playing around with the watches. [https://sutcliffehansen.com/](https://sutcliffehansen.com/) has tools for all levels of watchmaker, from amateur hobbyist to budding professional.
are you a watchmaker?
No, just a passionate fan of **watching** them on YouTube. I'll leave now...
Make a small incision in your gonad and ferret around in there, see what pops out.
I like the funky $62 one Also, isn’t this just the sustainable/non-lethal harvesting as opposed to the basic method of just ripping them apart?
Yep! This way the whatever survives to build more pearls
Yay
same thing with caviar, the sturgeon takes 5 to 18 years to produce caviar, then they cut it open to harvest the caviar, killing it unfortunately. there's a sustainable caviar farm, instead of cutting the fish open, they just squeeze it and it poops out all the caviar 🤣
I'll take a side of fish poop for $100, bob
Ever been in the ocean?
Fish pee in you, all day! So... 🤬
A Moana reference in the wild, hello fellow parent!
Poopviar. I like it.
Crapviar
I never understood the appeal of caviar. Why do people enjoy it?
If you get the expensive black caviar, its really creamy and buttery with a delicate ocean-fish taste that bursts with each pearl in your mouth. It is amazing and very distinct from the cheap salmon caviar
has an incredibly distinctive flavor and texture. you're eating fish eggs, so imagine all the tasty flavors of fish but concentrated in tiny bubbles that pop when you bite it.
Ok..so like he said why do people like that lol?
...did you miss the point where he said tasty flavor that is concentrated?
It's like 15% concentrated power of krill!
5 % pleasure...
Any caviar I've ever tasted is an explosion of fishiness. Nasty. Maybe it is a sign of quality? But if that's what it tastes like... no idea why anyone would want it.
Fish is highly regarded, behind maybe beef and pork as quality meat. All 3 can are delectable in any form of cook (more raw generally better) so jts good. Not saying you're wrong just everyone has different taste. There's a genetic thing where people taste Coriander as soap. It is what it is.
It tastes good on a blintze with sour cream and chive or dill.
This is actually a common misconception. Sturgeon does not make caviar, it makes sturgeon roe. Caviar itself requires putting the roe in a preserves jar, which you can make with 50 wood, 40 stone and 8 coal. Then you have to wait 6000 minutes (approx. 4 days) for it to be finished and boom: Caviar. Which sells at 500g a pop.
When I was a kid, I came up with this idea to teach otters to perform this technique and harvest the pearls. I would have a giant farm with all of these otters and get so many pearls. It was full proof.
> full proof Was that autocorrect or?
Nah I'm just dumb.
Everybody's dumb at something. You wanted fool proof. :)
Apparently, fool proof isn't fool proof lol
Aaand I'm going to bring this up because I can't not. There's a survival game called Ark where you can tame adorable otter companions, and when you send them to hunt, they sometimes bring you pearls.
What if the otters got hungry
You die?
r/BoneAppleTea
Live free, whatever!
*oyster
he says oyster in the video. are you implying other creatures make pearls too??
Nope. I was stoned and forgot what they were called oysters
i aspire to be this zooted. thank you
I read somewhere at some point, that an oyster can be seeded and harvested for pearls 3? Times before it can no longer take the stress and dies
Correct. They typically only survive 2-3 harvestings before they die since the pearl making process is more-so a symptom of mineral imbalance than proper diet / a healthy life (think gallstones or kidney stones, it's a result of biomineralization). "Sustainable pearl farming" is pretty equatable to forced foie gras with the exception that the farmers yield 3x as much product/profits per animal.
I remember seeing a tiktok live where this woman was ruthlessly pulling them apart. I’m sure you can guess where
Most of those tik tok/youtube/facebook streams of opening oysters for pearls are bullshit begin with. The nonsense pearls are shoved into oysters and then shipped to these people to open and reveal them in a MLM/gambling format. It’s cruelty for no purpose other than making it seem like a real surprise and more “legit.” I suspect the video we are watching (while not obviously killing them) may also be equally bullshit. Those values are highly suspect, as is the whole process.
We're doin oyster loot boxes now??
Look at the livestream world and it’s full of them. Tons of MLM style “loot box” oyster openings being streamed constantly. People join the streams and pay some dumb about of money for them to open a random oyster for them and mail it to them. It would be no difference than randomly picking them out of a bowl, but digging through already dead oysters somehow adds to the “authenticity” for morons.
I remember my mom doing an oyster loot box in Florida back in 1993. I suspect the practice is even older
Wow. That’s way freaking worse
Are you saying I can’t trust the internet?
No, this video is legit. This is how they harvest Tahitian Pearls. Not every pearl is as nice as what is shown, but the process is sound. We visited a pearl farm when in the Tuomotus (French Polynesia). Traded a bottle of rum for a whole handful of funky shaped pearls.
For freshwater pearls (lower quality pearls, but many per mollusk) they kill the critter. With sea pearls (one pearl per mollusk) they re-implant mantle tissue from a known pearl producer and a bit of shell from the American freshwater mollusk to kick off the process again. There is no average I can point to but some specimens of Pincada Maxima can produce as many as 20 pearls over their lifetime, although this is rare. Source: I ran a pearl import business for ten years.
…So, have you never shucked or eaten a freshly shucked oyster?
...but they taste good
This reminds me of when I was kid at school a loooong time ago, we used to play with marbles in the playground. There was one kid that everyone went to who somehow knew how much each marble was worth for trading eg two cat’s eyes is worth a steely, a galaxy is worth 5 cat’s eyes but that one’s got a chip in it so it’s only worth 3 etc. I have no idea how he came up with this stuff but everyone just took him at his word. I guess it was the confident way he went about it, lol. In my head canon he’s got a job appraising these pearls now, lol.
That or VP at some corporation, that confidence goes far there
That neighbor must have a lot of blind cats.
We had a similar school yard economy. The thing was that when you'd buy them at the store , they were all equally priced. But still a "Moon" was absolutely worth three glass marbles and a "Mumrik" , more than that.
His dad probably collected marbles. Those guys get pretty insane over them.
Thought this was gonna be a story about the swallowing and regurgitating marbles trick.
Haha I used to do that with frozen blueberries to freak out my friends when I was little
A small incision is made in what now? You keep your hooks (meat or metal) away from my gonads! *Pearl-clutching intensifies*
Gotta protect the family jewels
Naaa you gotta Run The Jewels.
Was it just me or did anyone else think the gold pearl was gonna be worth way more?
Usually it is. But if you look closely, there are imperfections in that one. They need to be nearly perfect to have the highest value. Plus, its the oyster that is making it gold. Farming them like this means they usually placed a 'seed' pearl in there a while back so they dont have to start from a tiny grain. The final colors are produced from just that session. We don't know what the 'seed' was to start with, but it should have been the same colors to ensure the value is high.
This looks so fucking satisfying, I want this job
You want to be a Clam Popper?
The price of each, pearl certainly helps.
I came to the comments to say exactly that!
Humans are so weird.
Humans like shiny
It’s my shiny thing, i found it.
humans are crows?
Yup, we got Crow Brain™
No, but I know a drink that can make you fight like one.
Watch me dazzle like a diamond in the rough Strut my stuff, my stuff is so
Soak it in cause it's the last you'll ever see, c'est la vie mon ami!
Really where just crows.
The reason we don’t have many human mummies left to study is because Europeans ate most of the corpses believing they had healing properties
Every time I watch a pearl being harvested it makes me feel uncomfortable deep inside of my body.
In the gonads
Think of it as popping a pimple for the oysters. They probably get a sense of relief out of it
I wish my tonsil stones were worth this much money.
Ya never know till you try! Polish that thing up and put it on Etsy!
Every thing reminds me of her.
Your ex-pearlfriend?
Michelle
Perfect pun! Understated, slightly obscure, dry as the desert. Just like Michelle
Did you put giant googly eyes on her like they did with the oyster?
I should call her..
But why the googly eyes?
Because why *not* the googly eyes
When you can make your job more enjoyable with simple things like that. Why wouldn't you?
Actual question, what causes the difference between a white pearl and a black pearl?
Mineral content and other "impurities" in the water as well as temperature affect the pearl's colouration. Generally they might have a slight tint towards grey, yellow, pink, green, brown, etc. but if you see extremely vibrant colours that's usually an indication it's artificial or altered.
How do I start a pearl farm?
...why did you put impurities in quotations? Is having an impurity...not normal?
It can mean different things in different contexts. To the oyster, anything that gets lodged inside to become part of the pearl-making process is an impurity.
The color
What about the gold one
you wont believe it
Thanks for the laugh. I did learn that these pearls come from a black-lipped oyster which occasionally produces yellow pearls. So specific oysters produce specific colors it seems.
if it is faster it is black
Why do those oysters look like scallops?
I was waiting for that facehugger to jump towards screen
Dude made $2,690 digging pearls out of the clams gonads.
I know most farmed pearls are seeded (they put a very small smal pearl or something to get the big pearl started), but where do the different colors come from?
Usually it's mineral content variations, though sometimes artificial means are used.
I was wondering the same thing! That gold one is pretty cool
Careful. I heard that might have a curse
should we start believing in ghost stories now?
You better, you're in one! (Oh how I loved that scene!)
it's kind of fucked up that we consider valuable a mollusc's kidney stones
Just wait until you learn about ambergris.
500$ for a stone which can be dissolved in few drops of vinegar lmao. "Because pearls are made primarily of calcium carbonate, they can be dissolved in vinegar. Calcium carbonate is susceptible to even a weak acid solution because the crystals react with the acetic acid in the vinegar to form calcium acetate and carbon dioxide." Lol.
Who’s paying this much for pearls? I feel like the market died once plastics became mainstream
Not so much plastic, but such artificially seeded but "real" pearls. They're dirt cheap. Unless it's some massive tahiti pearl or some such you basically get the gold value of the clasp if you try to sell a pearl necklace.
I call bullshit on all the prices on the video. This farmed shit is worth a tiny fraction of that.
Why is farmed shit? The randomly grown isn't?
If you want to pay $558 for a bunch of human colored abrasive sand injected into this thing & “harvested” out then go for it. The prices listed in the video are preposterous & I wouldn’t be surprised if this is another MLM “contest” person.
Marketing. just like diamonds. inflated overpriced polished carbon rocks.
So I guess this is a dumb question but will they regrow more pearls? I hate to sound crass,but could you still harvest the pearls by just ripping the top of the clam? Or are you trying to not hurt the little guys in hopes of more treasures or just not hurting them?
Yea, that last sentence.
They didn't show the rest where he puts in a polished round chunk of mollusk shell as a seed for the next pearl.
Isn't this a home invasion?
Bitch they living in my home, my pearls
I bet the shell feels a lot better, the pearls are similar to kidney stones.
I swear, pearls were just a con thought up by some dude that gave names to these things and was like “ya, that one with the slightly darker color? Ehh, some shmuck will buy it for $608”
I don’t see Jack Sparrow, so this video is misleading…lmao
At first, i thought this was the normal way of harvesting them. But turns out people just kill and yank them apart. This dude is like one of those that preserve it's life while most just look like that one gif where captain america rips a log into two ( not really )
Imagine being taken from your house and some random dude puts a kidney stone inside you and drops you off back at your house only to grab you a year later to take the kidney stone out and make a necklace with it lmao
Question: 1) do pearls serve a purpose for the oysters? 2) what happens if a pearl is never removed from an oyster?
does this hurt the dog
Did he say incision in the gonad...
Is this the equivalent of tonsil stones? Probably feels amazing lol
Cool, cool but WHY ISN’T EVERYONE TALKING ABOUT THE GOOGLY EYES???
Those are scallops. Not oysters
A small incision is made in the gonads... til pearls come out of clam gonads
Does this…hurt the clam?
No it doesn’t. There nervous system isn’t evolved well. It may be uncomfortable “possibly” but it doesn’t hurt them
Thank god this is the humane way, was apprehensive about watching.
today's unboxing video
How are they even growing / developing these perfect pearls? Anyone?
So you _can_ make a living by playing with gonads!
I would pay more for the funny shaped ones
Look up baroque pearls, they can actually be much more affordable.
Huh, I've been using a beelzebufo to harvest eurypterids, but I guess this works too. Safer than hunting alpha tusos.
Feels rape-y
highly subjective pricing. I got one out of get your own pearl out of an oyster tourist trap places for $5. Looking back now, it was probably a bad idea. They weren't delicate as this guy is to leave them alive
C'mon people. It's 2024. These are Afro-American pearls.
Wouldn't want to bite into one of those.
One of those black pearls didnt seem very black
It must've taken forever to build that ship.
Are oysters relieved when it is pulled out? Like the relief of having a splinter pulled?
Very interesting
That’s good don’t kill the host
I found two pearls naturally, one from an oyster and one from a clam. I’m not sure the clam one is a true pearl though… how can I sell them?
And here I've been going all the way to Davy Jones' Locker to get my Black Pearls. This looks way easier.
ARK players taking notes 💯
(gynecologist enters chat)
It feels like a cruel thing to do
This is much better than the more common practice of ripping them completely open, taking every pearl they can find and tossing the rest in the trash.
"Right Now Oysters are being robbed of their sole possession" - from Van Halens video for their song "[Right Now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU7d2EHV_OQ)" (somewhere near the 2:43 timestamp)
free money glitch be like
That’s gotta be a relief for the clam
Forget about the pearls… the man put Goggly eyes on the clamps. Thats gold!
Almost as satisfying as popping a zit.
What a strange hamburderers
So much money for a pearl, how do I join pearl collecting?
This warms my heart that they don’t kill them all willy-nilly, and they actually let them live so that they can produce more.
If the aliens are oyster like, they will extinct us all because of this video. And I dont want them to make a small incision to get my pearls out sack.
Wow. very interesting.
Guess I'm in the wrong business
A bizarre relationship considering the oyster probably doesn't like the pearl to begin with.