OpenFacet – Natural Round Melee & Pointer Price List

OpenFacet has added pricing for natural round melee and pointer diamonds, extending its coverage into a part of the market that is widely traded but rarely priced in a transparent, public way.

Separately, when OpenFacet refers to online retail scarcity, it means relative availability within the online listings we cover—not mine output, geological rarity, or total diamond supply.

Why small diamonds trade differently

Melee is not simply the lower end of the same market as certified loose diamonds. Once stones become small enough, the economics of trading them change. A 0.50 ct diamond can justify individual grading, photography, listing, comparison and negotiation. A 0.02 ct diamond generally cannot. The transaction costs would be disproportionate to the value of the stone. Small diamonds are therefore aggregated into parcels and sold by total carat weight, usually within a defined size, color and clarity range.

That changes the unit being priced. In the individually traded market, the unit is a specific stone with its own characteristics and often an independent grading report. In melee, the unit is an assortment. A buyer may be purchasing one carat of calibrated 1.5 mm rounds in a GH color range and VS clarity range, rather than selecting a series of individually identified diamonds. The parcel is expected to conform to a specification, but the stones inside it are not necessarily identical and are rarely documented one by one.

This creates an unusual market structure. Melee is in some respects more interchangeable than larger diamonds because buyers often require repeat quantities of stones within narrow specifications, yet pricing is less transparent. Larger stones are highly heterogeneous, but their individual identity creates observable listings and direct comparisons. Melee is physically more standardized, but the lack of individual grading and listing means that price discovery remains largely inside dealer relationships, supplier quotations and negotiated parcel trades.

What sits behind the price

The dealer’s role is also more significant than it first appears. A melee supplier is not simply buying and reselling diamond weight. Broad assortments have to be sieved, sorted, matched and maintained across many combinations of diameter, color, clarity and make. Stones that fall outside specification have to be removed or redirected elsewhere. A manufacturer may need a very specific diameter to fit an existing setting, or a narrow visual match to complete a production run. Inventory therefore fragments across many small categories, and the cost of maintaining immediate availability can be large relative to the value of any one stone.

This helps explain why spreads in melee can appear wide. The difference between an upstream parcel price and the price paid by a jeweler or smaller buyer is not necessarily pure trading margin. It may also compensate for sorting, calibration, matching, rejects, carrying inventory, supplying small quantities and maintaining consistent goods over time. In a market where the individual stones are low value but handling requirements remain real, these costs matter more.

Pricing is further complicated by the fact that a parcel description is inherently broader than an individual grading report. A label such as GH VS describes an assortment, not a laboratory conclusion attached to every stone. Two parcels carrying the same broad description may differ in consistency, cut, proportions, diameter tolerance or the distribution of quality within the lot. Quantity, location, payment terms and supplier reliability can also affect the transaction price. A meaningful melee benchmark therefore cannot be interpreted as an exact executable price for every parcel fitting a nominal category.

What a public reference makes visible

That is precisely why the market is worth pricing. A public reference creates a common baseline where previously there may have been little more than private quotations and trade knowledge. It makes it possible to observe how price per carat changes by pointer size, how color and clarity premiums behave at smaller weights, how different size bands relate to one another, and how the market changes over time. It also makes dealer spreads and the economics of sorting more visible, even if those spreads still have to be interpreted in the context of the services being provided.

The melee market is also useful for understanding a broader feature of diamond pricing. At larger sizes, the value of the stone justifies individual identification. Below a certain point, the market stops treating each diamond as an economically distinct asset and begins treating groups of diamonds as classified inventory. The underlying material has not changed; the efficient method of trading it has. That transition is determined by transaction economics rather than geology, and it creates a different pricing system on either side.

The OpenFacet Natural Round Melee & Pointer Price List is intended to provide a reference for that system. It does not assume that every parcel of the same nominal grade is identical or that every transaction should occur at the displayed level. The objective is narrower and more useful: to make the price structure of a traditionally opaque market observable, comparable and trackable.

Natural melee is used throughout jewelry manufacturing, setting and repair, yet its pricing has historically been much less accessible than its commercial importance would suggest. Adding a public price reference for it extends diamond price transparency into a part of the market where the stones are more standardized, the transactions are more aggregated, and the price formation is in many ways more interesting than for individually certified diamonds.

→ Natural Round Melee & Pointer Price List