CaratSixty-six dollars a carat: Gemfields invents the ruby middle market
Gemfields' first 'Trade Select' auction cleared 348,409 carats — 93.2% of the offer — for $23.1 million at a $66.30 average, with sapphire categories debuting alongside. Mid-grade African color now has price discovery of its own.
§1A printed price for color.
The colored-stone trade has always envied one thing about diamonds: a printed price. Gemfields' newest auction format is an attempt to build one for the middle of the ruby market — and its first outing, whose results the miner reported at the end of June and the trade has spent July digesting, cleared 348,409 of 374,008 carats offered, 93.2% by weight, for $23.1 million at an average of $66.30 a carat. Eighty-two of 89 lots sold.
The colored-stone trade has always envied one thing about diamonds: a printed price.
§2What Trade Select is.
The company called it a 'Trade Select' auction: a deliberately broader mix of ruby qualities from Mozambique than its premium sales carry, with newly introduced sapphire categories sold alongside for the first time. Where the flagship auctions serve the top of the market, Trade Select is aimed at the manufacturers and calibrated-goods cutters who need consistent mid-grade supply in volume — the part of the color business that has historically bought through opaque dealer chains rather than open tender.
The new tier exists because the top tier is being handled with care. Gemfields' May auction of higher-quality emeralds made $26.8 million — 99% sold by weight at $146.08 a carat — but managing director of product and sales Adrian Banks noted buyers were exercising caution even as competition for the very best stones stayed strong, with an Indian rupee roughly 10% weaker since September working against the trade's biggest cutting hub. The company is careful to say auction mixes vary and totals are not directly comparable; the trend line of recent years still slopes downward from the 2023–24 peaks.
§3Why the middle, why now.
For the counter, the read-through is friendly. A transparent $66-a-carat clearing price for honest mid-grade ruby and sapphire rough is the raw material of accessible color at retail — the $1,500-to-$5,000 case, where colored stones have been quietly taking share from diamonds all year. Price discovery upstream eventually becomes price confidence downstream.
Every maturing commodity market eventually splits its tape into grades, and color is finally doing what bullion and crude did generations ago.
If Trade Select holds as a fixture, the middle of the ruby market just got something it has never had — a number everyone can argue from.
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The association now speaking for the trade this tape prices