Price data
Ceylon sapphire prices, and where every figure comes from
This guide carries two kinds of figure and labels them apart. General market ranges, drawn from published trade and gemmological guides, rounded and dated, are a starting point for judging any quote. Live figures, computed from the certified stones listed on this site with the number of stones printed beside them, say what this collection actually asks. No table mixes the two.
The method
Where do these numbers come from?
A general market range comes from published trade and gemmological guides, read side by side and reconciled into round figures, with the month it was reviewed printed beneath it. A live figure is computed here, by these four rules.
-
One row per listed stone
A stone counts once it is published with a price, a carat weight and an issued report. A stone whose report is pending carries no price and reaches no calculation.
-
Grouped the way buyers shop
By colour family, by carat bracket and by treatment, so a figure answers the question a buyer actually asks.
-
The median carries the figure
The middle observation, not the average, so one exceptional stone cannot drag a whole group with it.
-
Thin groups stay unpublished
A group publishes only once it rests on three or more observations. Short of that, the row is left out entirely rather than shown thin.
What no figure here is: an appraisal of a particular stone. A live figure describes what is listed on this site; a general range describes the wider market in round terms. The methodology page sets out both, so you can judge them the way you would judge a stone: on what is written down.
Read the methodologyThe guide
What would you like to know the price of?
General ranges per carat, one for every sapphire type.
Price by colourComputed live from the stones listed here, colour by colour.
Price by carat weightWhy the price per carat climbs faster than the weight.
The unheated premiumHeated beside unheated, and how the gap widens with size.
Ruby and rare gem pricesRuby, spinel, alexandrite and the other Ceylon families.
MethodologyWhich figures are computed, which are typed in, and how.
Why are sapphire prices so different?
Two stones that look alike in a photograph can list an order of magnitude apart, and the difference is rarely a trick. Colour does the heaviest lifting; weight compounds it, because the price per carat climbs as stones get scarcer with size; and treatment splits the market again, with unheated stones commanding a premium over heated ones.
Each of those forces has its own page in this guide, with the basis of every figure stated on the page itself. Start with colour, follow the weight, then read the treatment premium.
Check the stones
Prefer the source?
The live figures trace back to stones you can open, each with its photographs, its details and, where issued, its laboratory report.
View the stonesQuestions
Asked about the numbers
If a question about the figures is not answered here or in the methodology, write to Colombo and a gemmologist replies, not a template.