Man Discovers Extremely Rare Pearl Worth $16,000 in His Clam Appetizer!

When on vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, Scott Overland of Philadelphia encountered a pleasant surprise when enjoying a raw bar appetizer.

On August 9, 2022, while dining at a Rehoboth Beach restaurant called Salt Air, Overland found a purple pearl in his clam appetizer. “I was the one mostly eating the clams and towards the end of the dish, I just chomp down on something that felt kind of hard,” he told TODAY Food in an August 16, 2022 article. “I thought it was a shell or something like that, but then looked and it was this little purple thing.”

Image by Scott Overland via Today.com.

After debating with his wife whether the pearl was a button, dot candy, or shell, they discovered from a Google search that it was a rare purple pearl that can be worth up to $16,000!

The restaurant revealed that the clam in question was a Mercenaria Mercenaria clam, also known as a hard clam. Only 1 in 5,000 hard clams produce a pearl. Most of the pearls are white in color.

According to the TODAY Food article, steaming or getting acidic liquids on the pearls tend to damage it. Few pearls survive all of the processing that goes into serving clams at a restaurant, making Overland's find even more lucky.

Overland was able to take the pearl home and still hasn't decided what he is going to do with it. Talk about a meal to remember!