Pearl Price Benchmark 2026 — Dataset & Methodology

Short answer: On 26 July 2026, the median asking price in our eligible catalog sample was $42 for a loose Tahitian pearl listing (n=74), $1,142 for a Tahitian necklace (n=77), $184 for a loose South Sea pearl listing (n=44), and $2,300 for a South Sea necklace (n=58). These are our own public product-listing prices, not appraisals or estimates of the wider pearl market.

This page is the canonical landing page for the dated dataset, its methodology, download files and changes. Prices and availability can change after the snapshot.

Catalog asking-price benchmark — 2026-07-26

What this measures: one product-level asking price for currently available pearl listings in our own USD catalog. It is not an appraisal, resale estimate, transaction-price study, or market-wide pearl price index.

Sample flow: 614 catalog products → 566 active, published and available → 358 with structured species and size → 341 eligible after quality rules → 296 observations in headline bands.

Product-listing asking prices in USD; headline bands require n ≥ 10
Pearl family Species Product form n Minimum P25 Median P75 Maximum
Tahitian Pinctada margaritifera Bracelet 17 $98 $136 $270 $380 $442
Tahitian Pinctada margaritifera Earrings 16 $112 $160 $234 $304 $420
Tahitian Pinctada margaritifera Loose pearl listing 74 $16 $34 $42 $58 $332
Tahitian Pinctada margaritifera Necklace 77 $98 $860 $1,142 $1,410 $1,960
South Sea Pinctada maxima Earrings 10 $70 $164 $284 $462 $684
South Sea Pinctada maxima Loose pearl listing 44 $8 $82 $184 $390 $1,624
South Sea Pinctada maxima Necklace 58 $186 $1,405 $2,300 $3,622 $6,800

Methodology and limitations

We take the minimum positive price among each product's currently available variants, so products with many variants do not receive extra weight. Species and size must come from structured catalog fields; product form comes from Shopify's structured product type. Explicit wholesale lots, pairs, mixed-species loose listings, implausible structured sizes and incomplete records are excluded. Percentiles use linear interpolation. Groups with 5-9 products are exploratory and groups below 5 are suppressed from editorial use.

Snapshot: 2026-07-26T00:57:09+00:00. Version: 2026-07-26. Source SHA-256: 94185136c11254bf9e838e5bfc100311f72a897a21ccc141f5cddcfa46639112. Prices can change after this timestamp.

Download the data

The files are ungated, versioned and machine-readable. The aggregate file contains all 16 bands and their publication tier. The observations file contains all 614 catalog records, including exclusion reasons, so the sample can be audited.

  • Aggregate bands CSV (text/csv, SHA-256 5c98d8826c08a31143da8601b32d44a80e6abbbb5ea77fe4dc7c9b59e4e40f77)
  • Product observations CSV (text/csv, SHA-256 d7c0fddcffdf9812118177dfc0ca30d5d15ab508744698971d8e220fc6c40cba)
  • Full benchmark JSON (application/json, SHA-256 327a5ea48d1347fd2d373cf77041ed0c9d0bf40cc4b442b1537a6bcd7acd131b)

Suggested attribution: The South Sea Pearl, Catalog Asking-Price Benchmark, version 2026-07-26, https://www.thesouthseapearl.com/pages/pearl-price-guides.

How to read this benchmark

Minimum and maximum
The lowest and highest product-listing asking prices observed inside a band. They are sensitive to outliers.
P25 and P75
The middle half of observed product prices lies between these percentiles.
Median
The middle product-listing asking price after sorting the band. It is not an average sale price.
n
The number of eligible product listings supporting the band. Editorial headline bands require n≥10.

Loose-pearl values use the public listing as the unit. Explicit pairs, sets, wholesale lots and other ambiguous quantities are excluded rather than treated as per-pearl prices.

Scope and conflict of interest

The South Sea Pearl sells the products measured here. That direct commercial relationship is why we call this a catalog asking-price benchmark, not an independent market index. It does not measure completed transactions, resale value, competitor prices, appraisals, costs, margins or future price movement.

Species and size are accepted only from structured catalog fields. Product form comes from Shopify's structured product type. Titles are used only for fail-closed exclusions such as explicit lots, pairs and mixed-species listings. This edition was checked by automated rules and has not been externally peer reviewed.

Citation example

@dataset{tsp_pearl_price_benchmark_2026_07_26,
  author = {{The South Sea Pearl}},
  title = {Catalog Asking-Price Benchmark},
  year = {2026},
  version = {2026-07-26},
  url = {https://www.thesouthseapearl.com/pages/pearl-price-guides},
  note = {Snapshot 2026-07-26T00:57:09Z}
}

Version history

  • 2026-07-26: First reproducible benchmark edition. Published exact sample flow, exclusion reasons, seven headline bands, nine smaller bands in the downloads, source digest and machine-readable distributions.