Cop Finds Rare Pearl Worth 10,000 Clams—in His Clam Stew
Formed by a grain of sand? Hardly ever in natural pearls; it's usually to enclose a parasite.
Call it pearl à la carte. A rare purple gem from a quahog clam was not exactly on the menu when Mike Serino, a Massachusetts policeman, ordered seafood stew at his birthday dinner six years ago. But that's what he found when he bit down on something hard. The natural pearl, about the size of a very large pea, is to be sold on Sunday at Kaminski Auctions in Beverly, Massachusetts, with a presale estimate of $10,000 to $15,000.
"It looked like a miniature Easter egg," said Harry Morgan, the auction-house appraiser who examined the pearl. "I've dug them, cooked them, eaten them, but I didn't know that quahogs produced pearls." (See National Geographic's favorite jewels, from
