How to know the price of sapphires

A very difficult question since it depends on the grades, colors and weight. The cheapest ones
are the simple processed sapphires since their processing add more value than the original sapphire value. Their price is in the range from USD 10-20 per piece.

The second scale corresponds to the cab sapphires, with few cuttings since their transparency is not enough. Their processing adds more value than their original value. Those can be found in blue and green. Their price tends to be non related to their size. Their price is around USD 10 per carat.








Star sapphires can be found in Thailand with black and golden colors. The blue ones are obtained after processing with titanium. Their prices are USD 10 per carat.


Next we have the sapphires with multi-faces. The cheapest ones have lower size, additions to the material or are treated with berilum. Their prices ranges from USD 20 per carat and increase according to size and color. Those with more than 1 carat and treated with beryllium (to yield a green color) are priced at USD 75 per carat. Those with yellow and orange-red colors are priced from USD 100 to USD 120 per carat.

Sapphires trated with beryllium are the ones with the highest price increases over the last years.


The Blue Sapphires that are treated with thermical procedures have prices that depend on their color and transparency. Those sapphires can range from USD 300 for clean pieces of 1 to 2 carats . Prices increase exponentially for sapphires with more than 2 carats. Some are priced at USD 400 per carat and the ones from Madagascar can achieve prices of USD 600 (without additions to the original material).


The finest sapphires without thermical treatement are rare and can be obtained from Madagascar (mine Diego Suarez). Some pieces with rounded shapes (that add much more value than other cuttings) can be priced at USD 965 and other pieces whitout thermical treatement  and in intense blue (with some green color), 6.33 carats and IF grade clarity can be priced at USD 5575.
It is unusual to find fine sapphires (without thermical treatement) at prices below USD 1000 per carat.

New Diamond Bourse for Banks, Brokers by Rapaport Group

By Chanyaporn Chanjaroen on June 06, 2012

The Rapaport Group plans to set up an online diamond exchange from October that’s open to banks, brokerages and other financial firms as well as industry members to benefit from increasing demand in China and India.

The exchange, to be called RapX, will offer real-time bid/ask prices and clearing services for institutional investors, Chairman Martin Rapaport said in interviews on the telephone and by e-mail. At present, about 7,200 industry members use Rapaport’s RapNet online exchange to trade, with about $6 billion worth of diamonds listed. There’s no estimate on the value of diamonds that’ll be available on RapX, he said.
Global rough-diamond demand may climb more than 6 percent a year in the decade to 2020, exceeding growth in supply, Bain & Co., a consulting firm in Boston, has forecast. China, the largest metals user, may overtake the U.S. to become the top market in 2015, according to the Antwerp World Diamond Center.
“Strong demand from top consumers in India and China in 2011 supported investment opportunities in this market,” said Sergey Filchenkov, a Moscow-based analyst at IFC Metropol.
Prices of so-called top-quality gems climbed 22 percent in 2011, the biggest advance since at least 2006, according to the RapNet Diamond Index, which calculates the average weekly price of the 25, best-quality 1-carat diamonds. The index declined 3.1 percent this year. A carat is a fifth of a gram. Spot gold rose 10 percent in 2011, rallying for the 11th straight year on increased demand, and is up 4.6 percent this year.

‘Consumption Story’

“The bottom line is the consumption story, especially in China,” said New York-based Rapaport, who introduced reports bearing his name in 1978, three years after becoming an apprentice diamond cleaver in Antwerp. “Diamonds are a store of value -- similar to gold.”
While the existing RapNet exchange that’s used by the industry is a so-called peer-to-peer network, where people trade directly with one another, the potential sellers and buyers on RapX won’t know each other, Rapaport said.
“The diamond world used to be a cozy market based on relationships,” said Claudio Ribeiro, chief executive at Carat Ventures, a Singapore-based diamond-investment company that uses the Rapaport index as part of its pricing model. “Now, the market has expanded beyond Antwerp and Israel.”
The U.S. accounted for about 38 percent of the global diamond market in 2011, China 11 percent and Japan and India 10 percent each, according to De Beers, which produces about 35 percent of the world’s rough diamonds.

Asia’s Millionaires

China, India and Singapore posted the biggest gains in millionaires last year as Asia countered a decline in wealth in western Europe and the U.S., according to Boston Consulting Group. Millionaire households in China rose 16 percent to 1.43 million, while those in Singapore climbed 14 percent to 188,000 and India saw a 21 percent increase to 162,000, the Boston-based firm said in a report on June 1. Millionaire households in the U.S. fell by 129,000 to 5.13 million.
Graff Diamonds Corp., the London-based jeweler, intends to open 11 stores in Asia over two years to capitalize on rising demand, Chief Executive Officer Francois Graff said on May 27, before the company shelved plans for a share sale in Hong Kong. Singapore Diamond Exchange Pte. Ltd. has partnered with IDEX Online to sell diamond portfolios at minimum prices of $250,000 from July, majority shareholder Alain Vandenborre said May 22.
Rye Brook, New York-based IndexIQ Advisors LLC applied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in March to list an exchange-traded fund backed by diamonds, according to a filing. The company, which runs exchange-traded products, didn’t specify on which exchange it wants to list the diamond fund.
Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) are seeking to sell their diamond assets. Rio said in March 27 it was considering selling the business as the mines in Canada, Australia and Zimbabwe no longer fit its strategy. BHP announced Nov. 29 that it’s studying the sale of some or all of its diamond unit.
Rapaport USA, Inc., based in Las Vegas, Nevada, owns the Rapaport - RapNet Diamond Trading Network.
To contact the reporter on this story: Chanyaporn Chanjaroen in Singapore at cchanjaroen@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Poole at jpoole4@bloomberg.net