Price of an Emerald Engagement Ring

Emerald engagement rings have a much wider price range than emerald wedding bands. This is because the main stone can be as big as you can afford. When purchasing an item like an engagement ring, it is less of a question of can you afford it and more of how much you want to spend.

For the Natural Emerald Company, our price range starts at $1,200 USD and goes up to $180,000 USD based on our inventory.

4Cs

The price of the engagement ring is mainly set by the center stone, which in this case is an emerald. Emerald price is mainly dictated by the 4Cs of color, clarity, cut, and carat weight. The first three Cs determine quality, and the final C, carat weight, determines the overall rarity. To get a better idea of pricing for quality, take a look at these two emeralds with the same color and weight.

Aside from being the same color, cut, and carat weight, the difference in clarity between these two gems is significant. Simply put, you pay for what you see. As carat weight increases, you pay exponentially for the same quality. See E99 for how the price jumps for the same quality in a gem that is more than one carat.

Additional Costs

When dealing with gems, there are additional costs with international shipping (Emeralds mainly come from Colombia), political conflicts between certain countries, and possible treatments. More than 99% of emeralds are treated for their clarity, with even the snobbiest of gem buyers at Sotheby’s purchasing treated emeralds for millions. Origin plays a role to a certain extent too with Colombia being considered the premier source for emeralds. However, 90% of all emeralds in the trade come from the source, so an emerald engagement ring from Colombia would not run a higher premium than an emerald engagement ring from Zambia.

For the same qualities seen in all of these treated emeralds, the scarce few untreated emeralds that are available will be another two to three times more expensive purely due to rarity.

Setting Costs

The rule of thumb in the jewelry industry is that the price of setting gems is never to exceed the cost of the gems themselves. Smaller gems will almost never have intricate settings, just due to the price of labor. If large, expensive stones are being set, then the price of labor is nothing in comparison.

As an example, here are two settings. The same emerald is used in both examples, with the only difference in the price being caused by the white gold setting.

The second example is almost $800 more than the first, which given the price of the emerald is not that much (setting costs are to never exceed the gem cost). However, this is a huge difference if the emerald cost $1,000 instead of $5,000. Small diamonds are not enough to make the price jump that significantly either.

The more gems set into the ring, or the more complicated a ring design is, the more costly the labor is. As much as 90% of costs outside of the emerald is labor, with the cost of materials making up the rest.