I bought a bracelet yesterday at the local corner store. It was a string of blush-colored "genuine pearls" for $5. These pearls are very common here, and you can get them anywhere for $5 or less. In fact, I bought another bracelet today for $4, of cream colored pearls. Anyway, at the Dole plantation, when we walked into the general store, there was a woman that handed me a ticket for a free spin. I go to collect my free spin, and I win a certificate for 50% the chance to find my own pearl. The normal price for this is $15, so this would cost less than $8. Of course, they also want the customer to have the pearl set in their own jewelry, which they could do right away. The lady takes me to a container of water and what should have been oysters, but they really looked like scallop shells. I'm curious, so I ask her what the pearls look like when they come out, and she shows me a small dish with pearls that other customers have just retrieved. I look closer, and there are HOLES DRILLED INTO THE PEARLS. So they obviously took a pearl, which by the way, were of the same quality as the string of 50 or so that I bought for $5, drilled a hole in it, then pried open a scallop (since they are prettier to the customer than oysters) and jammed it in, just so someone could pay $8 (or $15) to find and then spend $100 to get it set into their jewelry. Silly.
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