ATP - General Discussion, page-68

I’ve been analyzing the latest auction lot data in more detail, I’ll post some of the results later. In the meantime, surely it must be true that, with the doubling of pearl prices, low-quality pearls that previously were not commercial are now marketable. And as the costs of production are irrelevant, to be profitable they only have to cover the additional costs of grading etc and distribution. Maybe the three bulk lots at the bottom of the list are in this category? If ATP store uncommercial pearls from past harvests, they too would be available for sale now. The point is that much higher prices have the effect of increasing the size of the annual harvest, so we might see a bumper harvest this year. The size of the latest auction tends to support this. The additional sales will obviously bring down the average quality of pearls sold, but without affecting the prices of the normal lots. Excluding the last three lots, the average mommes per pearl increases to over 0.42, a substantial increase compared with the previous auction. That’s highly encouraging - now is the perfect time to sell higher quality harvests.