AAA, AA and A are trade grades that summarise a pearl's lustre, surface, shape and matching, with AAA at the top of a seller's own scale. They are useful shorthand, but no official body issues them: GIA, for instance, describes pearls with its own seven-factor system and puts no letter grade on its reports.

This is the single most misunderstood corner of pearl buying, and clearing it up will save you money. The letters are not meaningless — we use them ourselves — but knowing who awards them, and who does not, changes how you read every product page.

What the letters usually describe

Read the table as a seller's honest summary of their own stock, because that is what it is. Within one shop, the letters are usually consistent and genuinely helpful for comparing two strands. Across shops, one seller's AAA can be another's AA — there is no referee. Ask two jewellers to define their AA and you will hear two honest, different answers.

Grade inflation is the practical risk. Because the letters are self-awarded, a market where everything is AAA tells you nothing, and some sellers stretch to AAAA or "gem" to stand above their own ceiling. Treat anything beyond AAA as marketing dialect rather than measurement, and go straight back to the lustre, surface and nacre questions.

What GIA actually does with pearls

GIA does examine pearls, but with its own system rather than letters. A GIA pearl report describes seven value factors: size, shape, colour, lustre, surface quality, nacre quality and matching. Each factor gets its own assessment, and nowhere on the document will you find a AAA stamp. The letter scale is a separate, independent trade convention — so a listing that fuses the two, implying a laboratory awarded the letters, is either confused or hoping you are. That distinction is the whole reason this article exists: the lab describes, the trade abbreviates, and an honest seller never blurs which is which. Other respected laboratories work the same way, describing rather than letter-grading, which is exactly what makes their documents useful.

How we grade on our own tables

On our sorting tables, grading is daylight work. Pearls are sized through sieve plates in half-millimetre steps, then graded for lustre against a window — reflections must hold a crisp edge — and checked for surface under a loupe before matching begins. When we mark a Pinctada maxima South Sea pearl or a Pinctada fucata Akoya as AAA, that letter records what happened on this table, and we will tell you exactly what it covered, including nacre. Any seller worth your trust will do the same when asked. Matching is graded last and hardest, because it cannot be fixed after the fact: a strand with one dull pearl reads dull in the middle forever.

Using grades without being used by them

• Treat letters as a starting point, then look at the pearls in daylight photos or in person.
• Prioritise lustre; it flatters the wearer more than a technically cleaner surface.
• Ask what the scale covers, especially nacre thickness, which letters often skip.
• Compare within one seller, where the scale is at least consistent.
• Confirm natural colour, particularly with golden South Sea pearls — ours are never dyed.

Questions buyers ask us

Does AAA appear on a gem-lab certificate?

No. Laboratories such as GIA describe pearls across their own factors and issue no letter grades. If a listing implies otherwise, ask to see the actual report — the document will settle it in seconds.

Is an A-grade pearl a bad pearl?

Not at all. An A or AA pearl with beautiful lustre routinely outshines a flat, glow-less pearl wearing a higher letter. The grade compresses five qualities into one symbol; your eye can read all five separately.

Do the same letters mean the same thing on Akoya and South Sea?

No — they describe different ranges. An AAA Akoya is judged mostly on mirror lustre, while an AAA South Sea leans on size, colour saturation and satin depth. The independent Hanadama certificate for top Akoya is a different system again; our Hanadama guide explains it.

See how our own grading reads in practice across our loose South Sea pearls and loose Akoya pearls — every listing states what the grade covers, and we are glad to walk you through any pearl factor by factor.