I remember. I remember wanting some so bad I'd kill for them. :eek2:
The majority of the red sea maximas I saw were a solid powder blue color. Dare I say the mantles looked slightly different from other maximas. The eyespots on these clams were almost always dark brown to black.
Solid powder blue with no spots, no striations. Nothing. I also saw a few that were solid blue/green. These clams looked so good you could take a bite out of them. In May of 1997 a store called Tropical Marine Paradise had over 100 of them. All of them the same solid blue or solid blue/green color. This was in York, Pennsylvania.
Since then I have yet to be able to locate these clams, and it seems to me that these days a maxima is a Red Sea Maxima if a dealer calls it that. Sad. The era of wild caught clams is gone... of course back then I didn't know anybody with "mysterious clam diseases" or disasters of this sort.
In my opinion the coveted rarest clam of all is also solid blue. It is a dark, iridescent solid blue. If you can imagine a navy blue that looks like pearl paint on a car, you have it. No markings on it, just solid blue glowing iridescence.
I don't believe that teardrop maximas are the rarest because they exist in a few locations in the world. You can collect one with no problem if you look for it.
But the blue I'm talking about has only been found a few times. 2 or 3 maximum. (That I know of.) Beautiful clams are easy to come by... truly spectacular clams, now, nobody has them. Including myself.