Hello Fred,
thanks for showing your beautiful necklace with this fantastic colour!
And yes buying new ones is a good learning tool and handling old ones whenever you can.

The beads I saw in Paris were ancient beads, I have no doubts about that. They just had all this quite intense colour. It is a pity I could not take a picture.
So should I assume noone would colour less attractive -colourwise- ancient beads. Has anyone heard of this practice ?