Do you still remember the craze caused by a jade necklace in 2014 that spread throughout the jewelry, auction and fashion circles?

A natural jadeite bead necklace from the collection of legendary socialite Barbara Hutton was sold at Sotheby's spring auction in Hong Kong for HK$214 million, becoming the most expensive jewelry at the auction at that time.

This necklace first appeared at auction in 1988 and was sold for US$2 million, causing a sensation; six years later, the necklace was auctioned again in Hong Kong and the selling price soared to US$4.2 million.

The appearance of jadeite bead necklaces at auction undoubtedly means high prices. Why can such tiny beads repeatedly fetch sky-high prices? Why are jade necklaces so expensive? Today I will analyze for you the reasons why jade necklaces are so expensive.

Jade bead necklaces have always been about the color and water content of each bead being consistent and uniform, and the beads generally need to come from the same piece of jade material. Therefore, the raw material should not only be large in volume, but also have a dense structure, with few cracks and defects. Otherwise, it is impossible to cut out a sufficient number of beads to create a jade bead necklace with both variety and color and even matching.

Jade bead necklaces may seem simple to make, but the truth is that the process of making jade bead necklaces is more difficult than making complicated carvings. The preliminary design takes a long time, and how to cut and how big to cut to save materials are issues that need to be carefully considered.

Not only that, to make a jade bead necklace, the selected jade raw materials need to be cut into small pieces, and each piece is then slowly hand-ground into round beads, which in itself will consume the valuable raw materials. It is very difficult to polish all the beads to be the same roundness, the same size, or to arrange them smoothly according to size. Moreover, in order to make a bead necklace, it is necessary to cut three times more beads than the number of beads in the bead necklace for selection. As can be seen from this, a high-quality jade bead necklace is hard to come by, is extremely precious, and has a particularly high collection value.

Specifically the following points:

It is worth mentioning that even if the original stone is large enough, it may not be usable. Generally, the material with excellent quality, water color and color only accounts for a small piece of the entire raw material, so jade bead necklaces made from the same piece of high-quality jade raw material are particularly rare.

Although the production of jade bead necklace does not look complicated, its preliminary design takes a considerable amount of time. How to cut and how big to cut to save the most materials are issues that need to be carefully considered.

Moreover, these beads are all polished by craftsmen. It is very difficult to polish all the beads to be equally round and the same size, and now there are fewer and fewer craftsmen who can polish beads.

Bead necklaces are definitely the most material-intensive jade jewelry, no doubt about it!

Grinding small square pieces into round beads will waste a lot of valuable raw materials. If you want to make a necklace, you have to cut at least three times more beads than the original number for selection.

The most important thing is that when making a bead necklace, you must choose the best color part of the raw material. After the jade bead necklace has used up all the good colors, the other materials of a piece of raw stone will be greatly reduced.

4. The cost is so high that merchants are afraid

Jade bead necklaces require so much material and a very high amount of capital, so for jade dealers, this is obviously a very unprofitable deal.

Therefore, even though the price of jade bead necklaces is several digits higher than that of egg-shaped jade beads and bracelets, due to the limited number of buyers, jade merchants prefer to make the raw materials into egg-shaped jade beads and bracelets. Only merchants with sufficient funds and courage will choose to make jade bead necklaces. In addition, as the raw materials are becoming increasingly scarce, the price of jade bead necklaces is self-evident.

Jade bead necklaces are the rarest jade jewelry. A string of beads requires a large amount of raw stones, and the entire cutting process requires very high technology, which makes the risk of making jade bead necklaces very high. Therefore, a high-quality jade bead necklace is absolutely hard to come by.

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