Inside the Rising Market for Colored Gems

The secret seems to be out: colored gemstones have made significant progress catching up to the diamond market in the jewelry world. With lab grown diamonds steadily gaining market share, the value of diamonds is plummeting. Meanwhile the opposite is happening in the colored gem markets, especially when it comes to the most popular higher value gems: blue sapphire, ruby, emerald and Paraiba tourmaline. As a 2025 article by Jennifer Heebner of Spectrum details, many jewelers have shifted from an inventory that previously consisted mostly of diamonds to one with up to 50% colored gems. (The Rise of Color, Volume II, 2025, https://agta.org/from-prism-volume-ii-2025-the-rise-of-color-colored-gemstones-are-gaining-market-share-in-a-diamond-loving-world/).

If you consider availability and supply of colored gems vs diamonds, this shift is huge. While there are no hard figures available that compare production volume of diamonds vs, say, sapphire, minimum estimates are around 100:1 and above. (Most of the diamonds produced are industrial value, and that increases the difficulty of finding a good comparison base). Blue sapphire, meanwhile, is actually a very ubiquitous stone in the fine quality category (so I am leaving out amethyst and other quartz of lower value in this comparison). Sapphire is also one of the largest revenue creators in the colored gem market with total revenue of 1% of the total annual global revenue generated. So if you compare supply and demand, assuming that sapphire goes up from 1% to 2% of the global market because jewelry retailers prefer to have more sapphires in their inventory, pricing has to increase because there is not enough availability.

Anecdote: when I first started making jewelry, I pitched my inventory to jewelry stores and I was asked a few times if I could “create a line” with a particular gem. My answer was always “no” because each gem is unique and I would not be able to create even 5 rings where the center stone looks the same (assuming a larger center stone, say 1 carat and above). It is very hard to match five pieces of the same color blue sapphire in 1 carat round (let’s say 6mm on the nose). It is even harder to do that with ruby or emerald, and nearly impossible with Paraiba. With diamonds, you can easily match a few hundred pieces in that size (and same color, say GH, and same clarity, VS2 for example).

According to the Natural Gem article here, unheated blue sapphires have tripled in value between 2013 and 2023. Ruby has gone up by a factor of nearly five. Emeralds did not go up as much in that time period, but when I returned to Colombia last month after a 3 ½ year absence, I found prices to have nearly doubled from 2022. Note by the way the miserable performance on diamonds by comparison. Here's the graph from the article:

Also note that this graph ends just where it gets interesting, as lab grown diamonds have made quite a splash in the US market since 2023! Since then both market share and value of diamonds has dropped even further.

Now adding Paraiba tourmaline into the mix, we see an even more drastic price increase. A Swiss colored gem company called “Edelsteinkabinett” claims a 45% increase in value in the last year, with the most valuable gems coming from old stock (https://edelsteinkabinett.ch/pages/paraiba-tourmaline-prices-forecast). I can agree insofar as I have noted the the intensity of color in newer inventory has decreased, especially in the larger sizes, but really down to the smallest. For example, last February I wanted to stock up on the greenish colored smaller rounds (2-2.7mm) that I had in stock, as well as ovals of similar quality but bluer color. All that material had sold out in the meantime. I had bought most of it already in the past, not realizing there were no “refills”. Now I cannot replace it.

You can see the gems above here, here, here and here...

A couple of weeks ago I was asked what a top quality 1.5 carat Paraiba would cost now. Well, I saw one in Tucson, an oval from the old mines, glowing blue and clean. Adding my own margin, I quoted $117,000 net for the gem. Given the buyer’s response, their expectation was about 80% less than what I had quoted.

And the reasons they gave for why the value of one of my gems (which has since sold) should be lower: the cutting is “commercial” quality, my gem is “lighter” in color and more included than the gem for $117K. Aside from the fact that Paraiba are cut for minimal weight loss and maximum value, so that even a very high quality Paraiba does not necessarily look precision cut, the other two points were correct. My gem was lighter in color and more included than the gem that cost 10x as much. But that only justified the sticker price it already had, and not a price lower than that.

Gem dealers that can afford to own higher value inventory know how to evaluate the price of the gems they procure, so it doesn’t usually pay for a buyer that isn’t part of the trade to debate the “value.” If the buyer cannot find anything cheaper out there, then they are most likely mistaken in their assumption that it “should be cheaper.” Secondly, if the next buyer is willing to pay the set price, then that is what determines the value at that time. Just like the housing market. If inventory is low and demand is high, then housing prices increase, and vice versa. And if a buyer cannot bid high enough, it will not help to say that the “real” value of the house should be lower.

True: in 2016 I was able to sell decent two carat paraibas for $5,000 net (per piece). But alas, that time has passed!