La Pelegrina pearl

"[1][2] The pearl was found by an African slave on the coast of the isle of Santa Margarita in the Gulf of Panama in the mid-16th century.

The historian and writer, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, from the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru, made the pearl famous.

In his Royal Commentaries of Peru he wrote: This pearl, by nature pear-shaped, had a long neck and was moreover as large as the largest pigeon's egg.

It was valued at fourteen thousand four hundred ducats ($28,800) but Jacoba da Trezzo, a native of Milan, and a most excellent workman and jeweller to his Catholic Majesty, being present when thus it was valued said aloud that it was worth thirty—fifty—a hundred thousand ducats in order to show thereby that it was without parallel in the world.

had on a gray coat with silver embroidery: a great table diamond fastened up his hat from which hung a pearl.

[2] After the death of Maria Theresa in 1683 La Pelegrina's history went blank until it reappeared in Saint Petersburg in 1826.