A lucky woman uncovered a pearl while dining on oysters with her daughter in small-town North Carolina.
Freda Bryant made the fortunate discovery at Full Moon Oyster Bar in Morrisville – though unfortunately it was mid-bite.
Thankfully, her teeth were fine and she’s now poised to make a pretty penny, pending an appraisal of the pearl’s alue.
‘My daughter and I were coming from a doctor’s appointment and she was like, “Mom, we gotta get some food,”‘ Bryant told WTVD of how it happened.
‘So we ordered some oysters, and I’m eating… and I go “Oh my god, my tooth came out!'”
That’s when the pair realized the obstruction was actually pearl, she said – touting the brilliant, round prize roughly the size of a marble as she spoke.
‘It’s like one in 10,000 chances of this happening,’ she added, now planning to the have the pearl properly examined by trained experts.
Speaking outside the unassuming restaurant, she called the Tuesday find a direct message from the universe – one telling her to ‘keep moving forward positively’, no matter what.
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‘It’s impressive,’ added a staffer at the eatery, which sells the delectable, briny bites for $25 a dozen.
‘This is my pearl,’ added Bryant, parading the calcium carbonate-coated particle that could be worth thousands of dollars in a jewelry box. ‘Isn’t that cool?’
The smiling worker agreed – seemingly caught up in Bryant’s still-fresh elation.
Based on his expression, he too seemed astounded by what had just occurred, as only 1 in about 10,000 wild oysters will yield a pearl like Bryant slurped up accidentally.
The organic creations are made when a grain of sand or some other irritants gets into an oyster shell, spurring the oyster to coat itself with thin layers of a mineral secretion that form a pearl over several years.
Only a small percentage ever achieve the size, shape and color desirable to most jewelers – but, at first glance, Bryant’s bauble appears up to snuff.
Roughly the size of nickel, the price of the piece, based on its size, shapes and luster, is likely at least $100, according to analysts at pearl-lang.com.
Even if the mother and daughter had ordered two dozen, a hefty profit would be in the cards.
That’s one ‘shell’ of a discovery, some might say – as pearls popping up on a patron’s plate are exceedingly rare.
That said, the phenomenon is not unheard of, with a 66-year-old New Yorker coming across one while enjoying oysters at Manhattan’s iconic Grand Central Oyster Bar around this time in 2018.
‘For a fraction of a second, there was terror,’ Rick Antosh told the New York Post at the time. ‘Is it a tooth; is it a filling?’
‘And I took it out and saw that it couldn’t have been anything else [but a pearl]. It was pearly white and round.’
He went on to get the appraised by Eddie Livi, owner of DSL Pearl on West 47th Street in Manhattan. It was found to be worth $400.