
Jade is growing more popular in the West. Here actress Jessica Chastain attends the 2014 Hollywood premiere of "Interstellar" wearing a pair of finely carved jadeite earrings.

Growing demand from China's increasingly wealthy consumers and lower supply from Myanmar have seen prices for jade skyrocket.
"It's really hard to find a good piece of jadeite nowadays because the supply is getting less," says Chiang Shiu-Fung, an associate vice president and jewelry specialist with Christie's Asia. "It can be very crazy prices."
"It's really hard to find a good piece of jadeite nowadays because the supply is getting less," says Chiang Shiu-Fung, an associate vice president and jewelry specialist with Christie's Asia. "It can be very crazy prices."

Myanmar supplies the vast majority of the world's jade, and all of the higher quality jadeite. However, most stone is mined in a remote and conflict-ridden corner of the country, and the industry lacks regulation. Although there are no formal figures on the supply of jade, major auctions houses say supply is dwindling.

Jade is a broad term for a wide range of stones which, unlike diamonds and other gemstones, has no international standard for grading. Chiang says trained experts can be 80 to 90 percent sure whether a stone is jadeite or another kind of material. However, "if you really want to be 100 percent sure that a piece is jadeite, you have to send it to the laboratory," he says.
