The world’s largest pearl: fantastical tale of an 80-year hoax and the men and women who lost millions to its dubious charms
Supposedly coveted by Ferdinand Marcos and Osama bin Laden, and once valued at US$75 million, a web of fraud, murder and fiction has spread around the ‘Pearl of Lao Tzu’ ever since it was fished from Philippine waters in 1934
Legend says the diver drowned retrieving the pearl. Trapped in a giant Tridacna clam, his body was brought to the surface by his fellow tribesmen in Palawan, an archipelagic province of the Philippines, in May 1934. When the clam was prised open, the local chief beheld something marvellous: a massive pearl. In its satin-like surface, the chief discerned the face of the Prophet Mohammed, so he named it the Pearl of Allah. At 14 pounds, one ounce (6.38kg), it was the largest pearl ever discovered.
Filipino-American Wilburn Dowell Cobb was visiting the island and offered to buy the pearl. In a 1939 article in Natural History magazine in the United States, he recounted the chief’s refusal to sell: “A pearl with the image of Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah, is earned by devotion, by sacrifice, not bought with money,” he said.
But when the chief’s son fell ill with malaria, Cobb used Atabrine, a modern medicine, to heal him. “You have earned your reward,” the chief proclaimed. “Here, my friend, claim this, your pearl.”
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In 1939, Cobb took the pearl to New York, exhibiting it at Ripley’s Believe It or Not on Broadway. Upon seeing the pearl, Cobb said, an elderly Chinese gentleman “of highest culture and significant wealth” named Mr Lee “burst into an hysteria of trembling and weeping”. This was not the Pearl of Allah, he insisted, this was the long-lost Pearl of Lao Tzu.
In about 600BC, the man told Cobb, Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese founder of Taoism, carved an amulet depicting the “three friends” – Buddha, Confucius and himself – and inserted it into a clam so that a pearl would grow around it. As it developed, the pearl was transferred to ever-larger shells until only the giant Tridacna could hold it. In its sheen, Lee claimed, was not just one face, but three.
On the spot, Lee offered Cobb US$500,000, saying the pearl was actually worth US$3.5 million. Cobb refused to sell and the mysterious Lee returned to China, never to be heard from again. But his spontaneous appraisal – US$3.5 million – still forms the basis of a valuation that has steadily grown, from US$40 million to US$60 million to US$75 million and beyond.
Lee’s recognition of Lao Tzu’s legendary pearl, however, is at the heart of an 80-year-old hoax that has left a trail of wreckage across the US.
Bits of the legend are true: the pearl really was discovered when a diver drowned; Cobb acquired it from the local chief. The rest is a fantasy that Cobb invented.