CaratEdge counts August jewelry sales up 5%, units down 8%
The average retail sale rose 14% against August 2025. Diamond jewelry carried the month, its dollars up 8% on 9% fewer units, while sterling silver and alternative metals lost both.
Fewer pieces, more money. Independent US jewellers took 5% more in August than a year earlier on 8% fewer units, so the average retail sale rose 14%. Every category sold fewer pieces.
If you restock for the holidays: buy fewer, dearer pieces. The unit count is falling in every category.
If you sell silver: dollars fell 5% while units fell 19%. Price is carrying the line.
What this is not: a national statistic. It is one aggregator's store panel.
| Category | Dollars | Units | Average sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| All jewellery | +5% | −8% | +14% |
| Diamond jewellery | +8% | −9% | +18% |
| Coloured stones and pearls | +4% | −14% | +21% |
| Sterling silver and alternative metals | −5% | −19% | +17% |
IPrice is doing all the work
Every category shrank. Units fell in all three categories Edge reports, from 9% in diamonds to 19% in silver. Dollars rose in two of the three.
The ticket did it. The average retail sale rose 14% across the counter, and by 18% in diamond jewellery. That gain is what turned an 8% unit fall into a 5% dollar gain.
IISilver is the tell
One category fell. Sterling silver and alternative metals lost 5% of dollars on 19% fewer units, the only line where price could not cover the volume.
The entry buyer left. Silver is where a first-time or gift buyer enters the store. A 19% unit fall there is a footfall signal, not a margin one.
IIIWhat the aggregate hides
Coloured stones held. Coloured stones and pearls took 4% more money on 14% fewer units, the largest average-sale gain in the table at 21%.
01What would change this call+
A September in which units stop falling while the average sale holds. That would show the ticket gain is mix and not substitution, and the reading that fewer customers are buying dearer goods would not hold.
02What the Edge panel measures+
Edge Retail Academy aggregates point-of-sale data from independent United States jewellers running its store system, and reports month-on-month change against the same month a year earlier. It is a panel, not a census: it excludes chains, online-only sellers and any independent not on the system, and its composition can change between months as stores join or leave. Its average retail sale is reported directly from transaction records rather than derived by dividing reported dollars by reported units.
03Method · the desk’s arithmetic+
All percentages are Edge Retail Academy's as reported by JCK on 3 September 2026, comparing August 2026 with August 2025. No store count, panel size or dollar total is published in that report, so none is stated here. Carat Capital has not divided the reported dollar change by the reported unit change to derive the average sale, because Edge reports that measure separately and the two are not arithmetically consistent with each other in a panel whose composition can shift. Carat Capital's prior reading, published 26 July 2026, covered the first half of 2026 and the month of June; this covers August, a different period from the same source family.
Up nine percent, and the average ticket did the lifting
The same pattern at the half-year, when the ticket gain was nearly twice as large.
The trade, filed before the New York open.
Prices, tenders and the one story that moved the industry overnight. Ninety seconds.
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