Pricing the Priceless

Putting a price on some of the world's most valuable fancy color diamonds is a tricky business.

"You could probably count on one hand, maybe two hands, those people that are members of the trade of fancy color diamonds that could pick up a fancy color diamond, look at it and tell you more or less what is the market value," says Roy Safit, CEO of the Fancy Color Research Foundation (FCRF).

That's why there's such a buzz when exceptional fancy color stones appear at auction, like the two blues that each sold for over $8 million at Christie's Geneva last week.

Nobody knows how many premium stones like those are changing hands behind closed doors, or for how much. So public auctions are invaluable frame of reference.

"People are obsessed with auctions simply because it is one of those rare opportunities to open a window into the public results for pricing of fancy colored diamonds," Safit told IDEX Online.

The FCRF has long been tracking wholesale price trends for all sizes and intensities of pinks, blues and yellows, and publishes a quarterly update of its Index.

Auctions attract wholesale actors, said Safit, but they also attract wildcard collectors.

 "The wholesale actors are looking for ways to acquire a diamond that maybe can be recut, repolished, and have a higher color grading, and therefore it would be what the real estate denotes as a fixer-upper," he said.

"What you typically see in auctions is wholesale prices not retail prices so if you are going to see how much a fancy vivid yellow stone went for in an auction, then what you'll end up paying for a Tiffany ring or Cartier bracelet that has this type of diamond it's not even close."

But auctions also attract collectors, and they can be unpredictable.

"If there is a diamond that has been owned by someone of significance, like the Bunny Melon Blue  (9.51-carat fancy vivid blue, internally flawless, sold at Christie's Geneva in November 2025 for $26.5 million) you're jumping into another threshold of pricing where collectors are trying to grab that piece of history and they don't care whether the wholesale market prices it at one level or another level. They just want to own a significant part of history.

"For us, it's interesting to see how the bidding starts and at what point in time it's very clear that it pierced that glass ceiling of the wholesale band and moved into the collector's band."

The fancy color market is distinctly different from colorless, because color intensity is so important.

There's a linear increase in color saturation among fancy color grades - the four most commonly used are fancy light, fancy, intense and vivid - and that has a huge impact on price.

"Each increase in saturation level tends to raise the price per carat in increments that are roughly between 100% to 120%," said Safit.

"So in broad terms, if a fancy grayish-blue diamond is at 1x, that is a benchmark, a fancy intense blue diamond may command a premium that is approximately 2.2x compared to the fancy one and a fancy vivid blue may approach 4.4 x compared to the fancy one."

That explains the vast discrepancy in price per carat paid for the two blue diamonds - 5.04 carats and 31.62 carats that both sold for just over $8 million at Christie's New York last week.

Pic shows (left) the 31.62-ct Azure Blue and (right) 5.04-carat fancy vivid blue.

The smaller stone (fancy vivid) achieved $1.6 million per carat - more than six times that of the larger (fancy) stone.

The smaller blue stone is a fancy vivid blue marquise modified brilliant-cut, VVS2 clarity, potentially Internally Flawless, Type IIb, in a platinum ring with tapered baguette-cut diamonds.

The larger stone, called Azure Blue, is fancy blue pear modified brilliant-cut diamond, VVS1 clarity, potentially Internally Flawless, Type IIb, set in a platinum ring with pink round diamonds.

FCRF delves deeper in its analysis, assessing stones for their inner grade (more precise color grade), color dispersion (how well the color is dispersed around the mosaic of the face-up view) and undertone (how warm or cold the color is).

Each stone is scored out of four for each attribute and given a total out of 12. In our examples the smaller (fancy vivid) blue was scored at 10 out of 12 in the FCRF's pre-auction analysis. The larger (fancy) blue scored seven.

Have a fabulous weekend.