Week 6, 2026

The number that stopped me cold this week was 813,364 off-market listings. That's not a rounding error. Week 5 saw 145,053 stones leave the market; week 6 saw that figure jump by more than 460%. Combined with 571,812 new listings coming in, the market moved an extraordinary volume of inventory in a single week, and the net result was a contraction: active inventory fell from just over 10.28 million to just over 10.04 million stones. Something flushed through the system. Whether that's post-Valentine's Day clearing, a coordinated feed reset from a handful of large suppliers, or genuine sell-through at scale, the gross churn alone is the story of the week.

Prices softened alongside that churn. The overall median price per carat came in at $1,464.25, down from $1,481.48 the prior week, and the median transaction price hit $1,212.98, a six-week low. Neither move is dramatic on its own, but the directional pressure has been consistent: median price has fallen 2.28% across the full six-week window. Lab-grown drove most of the compression. The median lab-grown price dropped to $965.38, down 27.63% from $1,334 the prior week, even as lab-grown's share of active inventory held essentially flat at 60.1%. Natural stones also softened on median price (down 6.87% to $1,220.00), though natural per-carat pricing actually nudged up 1.98% to $2,279.50, suggesting the composition of what's going off-market skews toward smaller or lower-grade natural goods rather than any broad repricing of the category.

The spread story is worth attention. The median cross-retailer price spread on identical stones fell to 61.77%, a six-week low, and down from a peak of 64.75% in week 4. That's the tightest the market has been in this window. Cross-retailer overlap also dropped to 31.42%, another six-week low. Fewer shared stones, tighter spreads where shared stones do exist. One reading is that retailers are differentiating their inventory more deliberately; another is that the big off-market flush simply removed the heavily duplicated middle of the market, leaving a less overlapping remainder. Both can be true at once.

Shape moves were noisy this week, and some deserve scepticism. Asscher's median new-listing price nearly doubled to $2,952 from $1,486 the prior period, which sounds extraordinary until you notice that 16,190 new Asscher listings in a single week is a concentrated wave likely dominated by a handful of suppliers pushing higher-grade goods. Heart shapes moved more organically, up 32.47% to $2,112, with volume consistent with a Valentine's adjacency effect. Emerald cuts went the other way, down 39.2% to a median of $1,000 on 37,771 new listings, suggesting significant lab-grown volume flooded that shape. Round remained the dominant shape by a distance, taking 40.88% of all new listings at 233,757 stones, with a median new-listing price of $887.21.

On the notable stones end of the market, the largest stone listed this week was a 31.21-carat lab-grown G/VS1 emerald cut at $63,290. The priciest was a GIA-certified 20.01-carat natural E/VVS1 oval at $1,660,824, which is the kind of stone that reminds you the natural top end and the lab-grown volume market are operating in almost entirely separate universes right now.

Heading into week 7, the off-market surge is the thing to watch most closely. If listings stabilise and new supply continues at roughly this week's pace, active inventory could tick back up. But if another wave of off-market activity follows, and spreads keep compressing, buyers shopping the same stone across multiple retailers will find less pricing daylight to exploit than they've had at any point this year. That window doesn't close overnight, but it's narrower than it was a month ago.

Lucy Market Index

Ten numbers I record every snapshot.

Versus Week 5, 2026

Biggest shape movers

Recent trends

How metrics are tracking across the recent window of snapshots.

How the Lucy Market Index has moved

By origin

Top shapes by new listings

Notable stones

Each stone links to its full Carat Hunter listing.