Price and Value

The ultimate aim of most theories of Economic Value is to explain why people pay what they do for something.  Accordingly, implicitly or explicitly, Exchange-Value is preeminent in them.  However, there are cases in which Price itself has value.  For example, the price of diamonds usually reflects their scarcity and the difficulty in the Supply process.  But, as has been previously discussed, people pay that price in order to signify simply that they can afford it, whereby it thus functions independently as a status symbol.  Thus, Price-Value has Prestige-Value, which either exceeds the limits of standard Value-Theory, or, if classified as a type of Use-Theory, undermines the preeminence of Exchange-Value.