Pearls were once worth more than diamonds

For most of human history, pearls were more valuable than diamonds. And once you know why, it makes complete sense. So before there were pearl farms, every single pearl had to be found by complete chance in a wild oyster. Only about one in 10,000 of those oysters even contained a pearl, and only a fraction of those were good enough to be used for jewellery. So now imagine trying to make a necklace. Finding one exceptional pearl is already rare enough, but finding dozens that matched in shape and colour could take years, if not decades. And they weren't cheap. Exceptional pearls could rival the value of estates or ships. But pearls were admired for more than just their rarity. Unlike other gemstones, they didn't need to be cut or polished. They just emerged from the oyster already beautiful. And to ancient civilizations such as the Romans, that seemed almost magical. The finest pearls come from the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and Sri Lanka, where divers literally risked their lives searching the ocean for them. And for European royalty, this meant that pearls had to be imported from thousands of miles away, making them even more exclusive. Rulers at the time wore them as the ultimate symbol of wealth and status. No one more so than Queen Elizabeth the First, who was painted wearing hundreds of them as a public display of her immense power. Then, in the early 1900s, everything changed. Cultured pearls were invented. And so they became dramatically more accessible. A gemstone once reserved for royalty became something that millions of people could own. But I wanna hear from you, did you know this? And does it change how you think about pearls?