With the pearl necklace and earrings that Rams sent to me, I decided to look up and see how a pearl is created. This is something that I normally wouldn't ask or wonder about, yet now that I own some genuine pearls, I wanted to know how they come into existence. So this is what I found:

The following is directly taken from How stuff works: How do oysters make pearls?

"The formation of a natural pearl begins when a foreign substance slips into the oyster between the mantle and the shell, which irritate­s the mantle. It's kind of like the oyster getting a splinter. The oyster's natural reaction is to cover up that irritant to protect itself. The man­tle covers the irritant with layers of the same nacre substance that is used to create the shell. This eventually forms a pearl.

So a pearl is a foreign substance covered with layers of nacre. Most pearls that we see in jewelry stores are nicely rounded objects, which are the most valuable ones. Not all pearls turn out so well. Some pearls form in an uneven shape -- these are called baroque pearls. Pearls, as you've probably noticed, come in a variety of various colors, including white, black, gray, red, blue and green. Most pearls can be found all over the world, but black pearls are indigenous to the South Pacific."

So in the end, a pearl is just a product created from waste that is unable to be removed from the inside of an oyster ... why are they so expensive then?