Why are pave diamonds so cheap?

Commercial-grade melee sits around AU$500 to AU$1,500 per carat in 2026, while a single 1ct G VS1 round natural runs roughly AU$7,000 to AU$12,000 per carat. The gap is partly supply: melee is mostly cut from fragments of larger rough that would otherwise be waste, and a single rough crystal can yield dozens of usable melee pieces. The second factor is volume: melee is sold in parcels of hundreds of matched stones, where centre stones are bought one by one after long selection. Both factors together drop the per-carat figure by roughly an order of magnitude.

On a pave band the diamonds are the cheap part. The expensive part is the labour: a bench setter spends several hours under a microscope drilling seats, dropping in matched stones and raising holding beads with a graver. That work runs from a few hundred to about a thousand dollars on a typical band, and significantly more on a halo with two or three rows or a hidden halo with side-set stones. The cost ratio is roughly 1 part stones to 3 to 5 parts labour, which is the inverse of a solitaire where the centre stone is most of the price.