Price of Emerald Jewelry
J8982 | play
Jewelry ID: J8982 – Weight: 0.46 Carats – Price: $650
J8893 | play
Jewelry ID: J8893 – Weight: 17.71 Carats – Price: $227,500
Emerald jewelry can fluctuate significantly in price depending on the quality of the emeralds, what metal is used, the number of stones being set, overall complexity of the design, and especially the labor costs for setting gems.
As an example, one of the lowest prices we have listed for emerald jewelry in our inventory is $650 for emerald earrings.
The most expensive emerald jewelry in our system is, funnily enough, another pair of earrings. It has a lot of diamonds of high quality, along with the emeralds themselves being over 8 carats apiece, causing the pair to end up being priced at $227,500 USD.
Different Parts of Pricing
Let’s start by looking at the emeralds. Emerald price is based mainly on the 4Cs of color, clarity, cut, and carat weight. This is followed by possible treatments, any issues with international trade relating to emeralds, and lastly the practices of each vendor.
As seen above, the size of the earring pairs is definitely a factor in price. What most people outside the industry will overlook is how difficult pairing gems is. Unless cut to specifically be a pair, matching large emeralds (or any other gem) can take years. Between all the different parts of colors and cut showing, matching pairs (much less sets), can be a huge challenge. This is especially true for large, rare emeralds.
After evaluating the emeralds we review the costs of the metal for the ring, any diamonds added to the setting, and the labor involved in the creation of the jewelry. The labor can easily exceed the cost of the gemstone, depending on the individual pieces of emerald jewelry. Labor can be worth 90% of the total setting costs.
Origin is also worth noting as a factor in price from most gemstones. Colombia is the premier emerald source of the world, though it also supplies 90% of all emeralds on the international market. As a result an emerald engagement ring from Colombia would not run a higher premium than an emerald engagement ring from Zambia due to origin. If emeralds from Colombia were rarer from this source, and the premium for origin would increase.
Conclusion
While individual setting costs do vary, emerald jewelry will be more expensive than most diamond jewelry purely due to the rarity of emeralds in comparison to diamonds. The availability of diamonds is part of the reason they are almost always used in pave settings, like the ring on the right.
There are exceptions to this rule with fancy colored diamonds. These are the rarest diamonds to be found anywhere, with the cost matching the rarity and easily dwarfing the price of emeralds. However, colored diamonds make up an extremely small market and rarely ever show vivid colors. They are usually soft and muted pastels.
The best colors are usually reserved for colored gems like emeralds.
J8945 | medium | play
Jewelry ID: J8945- Weight: Emerald 5.01ct – Diamonds 1.71ct – Origin: Zambia