CaratColor takes the counter: what Vegas confirmed about the gemstone decade
Engagement customers are asking for sapphire, spinel and garnet by name. Margins beat diamonds. Tucson ran near-record. The colored-stone trade's long apprenticeship as 'the alternative' is over.
The State of the Colored Gemstone Industry panel at JCK Las Vegas said out loud what dealers' order books have shown for two years: color is no longer the consolation prize. Retailers report customers arriving with colored stones as the first choice for engagement rings, coached by a social feed that rewards individuality over the four Cs. One panelist's summary of the opportunity: garnet is an untapped market, and tourmaline's colorways are just beginning to be explored commercially.
The economics explain the enthusiasm as much as the aesthetics. Colored stones carry meaningfully better margins than diamonds at the counter, and unlike the diamond pipeline there is no lab-grown shadow repricing the category from below at scale. One retailer described re-merchandising the entire case plan by color family in 2025 — organizing inventory the way customers actually shop rather than by species — and reading the sell-through by location like a heat map.
Supply-side signals match. A major dealer called the 2026 Tucson GemFair one of its two or three best shows ever, with manufacturing orders extending into 2027. Beyond the big three of ruby, sapphire and emerald, the momentum names are spinel, tourmaline and garnet — stones with color saturation, story and, crucially, price points that survive a $4,100 gold setting around them.
Two clouds. First, tariffs: loose colored gemstones lost their traditional duty-free entry to the US, with rates now varying by origin country, and AGTA is petitioning for an exemption under the harmonized codes. Second, integrity: the SSEF issued a trade alert on emeralds being fraudulently re-filled with resin after laboratory testing — clean report first, treatment after — a scheme aimed precisely at the trust that lab reports exist to provide. Check report dates against purchase dates, and re-test anything consequential.
The desk's view: the category's constraint is not demand but disciplined supply and graded trust. The dealers investing in traceability and consistent recuts will own the next five years; the ones treating the boom as a clearance opportunity will hand the future back to the diamond counter.