The Value of Jade
How much a piece of stone is worth depends on how much it is liked by someone or how much its potential owner thinks it is worth.
A piece of jewelry is valuable to you largely because of how much you like it or how much it means to you. A piece of stone like jadeite jade should be adored for its natural beauty, but not necessarily for the value the market tells you it should be.
As with diamonds, gold, and many other types of precious stones or precious metals, a standardized grading system is created to correlate with market prices according to rarity and weight, however jade is valued quite differently. There is not a standardized valuation system for jade. People value jade based largely on demand and their own personal experience in determining its rarity and quality.
Jade pieces of exceptionally rare quality might be seen in auction house catalogs as they obviously belong to the most expensive categories.
But two pieces of natural jadeite of the same size can have one costing US$5 and the other US$500,000. It all depends on its naturalness, colour, and transparency. An opaque and deep green jadeite costs a lot less than a relatively lighter green but more transparent jadeite. The evenness of colour distribution and many other factors also determine the value of jade.
Although there is no absolute grading system for jade like there are for diamonds or gold, there are indeed three categories to define jade in order to help buyers distinguish what is “real” jade and what is “fake” jade.
