52277.0 40 Carved 6.5 mm Vintage Coral Harvested from the Sea 1970's to 1980's

This is NATURAL Coral, harvested from the seas off Taiwan in the 1970's and/or early 1980's.

In 2014 Taiwan restricted the harvesting of Coral to 6,000 kg per year.

By the time this is processed into beads, cabochons and carvings, the weight and number of Coral items getting to the market is drastically reduced.

This caused a huge shortfall in the market which has been made up with a flood of these so-called "natural", "untreated" Coral imitations like bamboo, resins, re-constituted Coral (unusable coral, crushed into powder, colouring added and mixed with a resin) etc..

The colour of these imitations are usually a blood red; to imitate Oxblood Coral.

Anything claimed to be Natural Coral and which has a perfectly uniform colour all over should be viewed with care.