Stone Flower,LLC            

Price USD/ct

How the price of Russian demantoids is formulated;

it's like with other gem stones:

4c's - color, clarity, cut, carat (weight), plus I should add here "compatibility", it's a unique stone, this type of garnet can be found only in Ural Mountains of Russia (other places are Mexico, Italy, Iran, Namibia) but only Russian prized so highly...the production is very sporadic, one season brings fairly good amount of material the next brings almost nothing...so miners try to get maximum value from their seasonal production... Russian demantoid yielded its fame to "tsavorite", another variety of grossular  garnet(demantoid is androdite garnet), it was considered to be rare until 70s when Tiffany and Co. launched a big compaign which helped this stone to fill its niche in the gem industry.

But unlike tsavorite and e.g.Namibian demantoid, Russian gem does not have to  be perfectly clean, the stone has to have inclusion...some Japanese gem dealers do not buy clean Russian material, so the "horsetails" add considerable value to Russian demantoids...