The most opaque corner of the trade — and the most alive. The gemstone desk tracks auction results from Zambian emerald and Mozambican ruby tenders, the cutting rooms of Bangkok and Jaipur, treatment disclosure fights, and the collector demand pushing top stones past diamonds.
Untreated Burmese rubies, Kashmir-quality sapphire and vivid Colombian emerald keep setting per-carat records. Scarcity is structural: the great mines are old and the new finds are small.
A ruby's passport matters as much as its color. Lab reports naming Mogok or Kashmir multiply value — which makes origin science, and origin fraud, the desk's permanent beat.
Producer tenders in Zambia and Mozambique now set benchmark rough prices with auction transparency — squeezing the traditional dealer margin and professionalizing a famously handshake market.
Emerald, ruby, sapphire — the trio that anchors colored-stone value. Everything else, however beautiful, trades as 'semi-precious' economics with rare exceptions like paraíba and spinel.
Most gems are heated, oiled or filled to improve appearance; the sin isn't treatment, it's silence. 'No indications of heating' on a lab report can multiply a stone's price tenfold.
Labs read a stone's chemistry and inclusions like a birth certificate — Mogok ruby, Panjshir emerald, Ceylon sapphire. It's expert judgment, not barcode certainty, and labs occasionally disagree.
The trade's most contested color term: the pure vivid red, historically Burmese, that marks the summit of the ruby market. Whose lab gets to say it is a running commercial war.
Gemological Science International has begun issuing coloured stone reports carrying the recognised colour trade names, reported by Rapaport on 19 August 2026: Pigeon Blood for ruby, Royal Blue and Padparadscha for sapphire. The reports issue from GSI's Jaipur, Mumbai, New York and Bangkok operations, and it is the first time such reports have been issued in India, where stones previously had to travel abroad to be granted a name. GSI defines each designation by specified ranges of hue, tone and saturation assessed under standardised lighting and supported by spectroscopic and colorimetric analysis, and grants them only to untreated stones; heated, diffused or otherwise enhanced material is not eligible whatever its colour. Meenu Brijesh Vyas, GSI's global head gemologist, said of the change: That ends today. SSEF's published criteria are comparable: pigeon blood red requires strong vivid red saturation with no or slight purplish tint, strong ultraviolet fluorescence from high chromium and low iron, no colour zoning from above, freedom from eye-visible dark inclusions and no fissure or cavity filling, and applies only to rubies showing no indication of treatment; royal blue requires strong vivid blue without greenish, greyish or purple tint, an iron-titanium charge transfer spectrum, colour homogeneity and good transparency.
The Gemological Institute of America and the Gübelin Gem Lab announced jointly on 27 August 2026 that Ethiopia is a new source of copper-bearing tourmaline meeting the widely accepted definition of Paraíba tourmaline, which had previously been produced in Brazil, Nigeria and Mozambique. The two laboratories reached the conclusion independently and on separate material. Gübelin first encountered stones with an unfamiliar chemical signature in early May 2026. GIA began examining goods represented as Ethiopian in June 2026 and later received a parcel of more than one hundred rough and faceted samples. Both name elevated concentrations of vanadium, lead and gallium as the separating markers and describe them as measurable determinations; neither has published thresholds, and the detailed findings are going to Gems & Gemology. Colours reported run from blue to bluish green, violet, purple and colourless, with colour zoning and compositional variation within single stones. In June 2026 the Swiss Gemmological Institute SSEF reported credible accounts of an Ethiopian deposit and said its own preliminary trace-element work on submitted stones showed considerable overlap with previously known localities, particularly Brazil, calling origin determination on some specimens difficult and in some cases inconclusive. No price, parcel value or carat weight has been published for Ethiopian material. For price context this paper reported on 30 July 2026, from Rapaport's January survey, that Mozambican Paraíba had moved from around $7,000 a carat to between $10,000 and $12,000 a carat.
The Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council's release of 25 August 2026 records the 13th India Rough Gemstones Sourcing Show opening in Jaipur on 24 August and running to 11 September, a nineteen-day window. Kagem Mining Ltd of Zambia is named as showing rough emeralds, and is the only source-country miner named. The council puts attendance at more than 60 Indian coloured-gemstone manufacturers, its own count and not independently audited. R.K. Chandan, Commissioner of Customs at Jaipur, was chief guest, with Jeevan Ram Dhaka, Assistant Commissioner of Customs at ACC Jaipur, Yogendra Garg, the council's regional chairman for Rajasthan, and D.P. Khandelwal, convener of its coloured gemstones panel. The stated purpose is to let Indian manufacturers buy rough at source without travelling abroad. Kagem is Gemfields' Zambian emerald mine, 75% owned with the Industrial Development Corporation of Zambia holding the rest; its higher-quality rough auction held in London across May took $26.8 million, clearing 36 of 37 lots and 183,385 of 185,135 carats at an average $146.08 a carat, as this paper reported on 24 July, and Gemfields took $102.9 million from auctions across the first half of 2026, up 72%, as reported here on 31 July. No value, carat weight, lot count, sale mechanism or result has been published for the Jaipur show, which does not close until 11 September.
The Fancy Color Research Foundation's index of pink, blue and yellow diamonds fell 0.1% across the second quarter of 2026, reported by Rapaport on 3 August. Pink rose 0.1% after falling 0.3% in the prior quarter, with 1 and 1.5-carat pinks each up 0.4%, 2 and 3-carat pinks each up 0.6%, fancy-vivid pinks up 0.5% and fancy-intense pinks down 0.1%. Blue fell 0.4% after falling 0.3%, with 1-carat blues up 0.7%, 1.5-carat down 0.2%, 2-carat down 1.3%, 3-carat down 0.7% and 5-carat flat; 1-carat fancy-vivid blues rose 1.5% while fancy and fancy-intense blues each fell 0.6%. Yellow fell 0.3% for a second consecutive quarter, with 3-carat yellows up 0.7% against fancy-intense yellows down 1.3%. The foundation described a market that remained broadly stable.
Gemfields reported auction revenue of $102.9 million for the first half of 2026, up 72% year on year. Kagem in Zambia held premium emerald output, and its higher-quality rough auction in May took $26.8 million, selling 36 of 37 lots and 183,385 of 185,135 carats offered at an average $146.08 a carat. A mixed-quality ruby sale in February added $53 million from 121 of 135 lots. At Montepuez in Mozambique, premium-grade ruby recovery ran at 0.025 carats per tonne; the company is redirecting mining to higher-potential areas and has commissioned a new processing plant expected to reach full capacity later in 2026. Net debt stood at $44.2 million on June 30, before $33.3 million of auction receivables. Full results are due on September 25.
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