Anyone can assign value to a mineral found on earth, but yes, minerals are real, lol.

@Blackberry can you establish that cloud pearls are real?

@Ltryptophan Oh, no, I’ve been looking. It is possible it could be formed naturally, or it could have be man made.

@Blackberry I suspect that the Conch pearl is the coolest of the ones I saw there,since I imagine it is founded in reality.

The wiki link you provided says they are fakes. The origin of these Pearls are part of the Mythology of the Hindu teachings. So I would expect the “realness” of these Pearls would depend on the level of your Hindu faith.

Not all are listed as fakes, sometimes mythology is based on facts.

@Ltryptophan Just going by what I read….plus I never said mythology was not based on fact.

“Unfortunately, all of these pearls presented on various websites are fake”

@Cruiser I think they are saying that the ones on the sites are fakes and repro’s…

Geographically, the pearls are most likely found in Indonesia, whether fake or real, where fake pearls are used by people somewhat like Christmas decorations. What are considered cultural objects that are only meant to mimic the real objects, people in Indonesia pay very little for the fake pearls. Unfortunately, there are a number of online companies that are selling these fake pearls for large sums of money. When it comes to the Cloud Pearl, as an example, there are most likely less than forty existing worldwide. With the high volume of Cloud Pearls sold online there is seemingly an endless supply avaailable. The Cloud Pearl and the other eight pearls are truly amazing and beautiful cultural objects that may become unavailable in the very near future based on the disappearance in the environment, except those that are in the possession of museums and collectors.

Most mollusks produce enough nacre that will make a “pearl” around some irritant such as sand, shell bits or man made thing inserted into the live animal. “Pearls” can form as shapes on the insides of the mollusk shells themselves or on the free floating irritant. Aside from water mollusks though, the rest are not pearls. You can call a gallstone, bladder crystal or whatever from any creature what you want but it’s not a pearl.

There are certainly glass-like projectiles that occasionally rain down from the sky, though they don’t tend to look like blue spiral-wrapped eggs. They’re called tektites. Most are blackish round lumps, like this. Occasionally, they’re more translucent and colored, like this.

They’re thought to originate as molten blobs formed by the heat and pressure of meteor impacts on the surface of the earth, and sent flying through the atmosphere, where they solidify before falling back to earth. Some solidify into unusual forms because of the air resistance as they’re flying.

I guess the more fancifully-minded could think of them as “cloud pearls”. I wouldn’t think it would be much of a blessing to have one of these land at your feet, though, since it would mean you’ll soon be dealing with the fallout from a major metor impact.

@thorninmud Very cool, GA.
@Neizvestnaya I’m not so concerned about their terminology so much as their existence.

@Ltyptophan: Well there you have it, clouds don’t produce nacre- no cloud pearls.

It says mythological next to cloud pearls . . . and the other ones have descriptions where they come from . . . so cloud pearls are fake and the others are real.

I don’t get what we’re missing here, LOL