Pricing

Few markets answer so plainly to supply and demand. A diamond commands the figure the next buyer is prepared to part with, and no more — scarcity at one end, appetite at the other, and a number where the two meet. So that the trade is not left to settle each stone from first principles, the polished market is mapped weekly into published reference lists, against which houses the world over set their own numbers.

A list, though, only ever describes a starting point. Every stone can be assigned a price, but the accuracy of that price rests entirely on the eye that grades it. Read the colour a shade too kindly, overlook an inclusion sitting beneath the table, and the figure is already wrong by the time it is written down. The buyer who would rather not shoulder that uncertainty has a plain remedy: see the stone graded by a laboratory worth its seal before any number is agreed.

How VHENY prices

The methods that follow across these pages are drawn from our own experience at the bench and the table. They are not the only ways to price a diamond — no single method is — but they are sound, and they are how the house works.

VHENY prices polished stones against the Rapaport list, the trade’s most widely used reference, and sells wholesale. Round diamonds price differently from fancy shapes; rough is a discipline of its own; and the largest and rarest stones leave the list behind entirely. Each is taken in turn in the articles alongside this one.