From bug report: [ 1668562 ] Un IDd gems tell their value.
Unidentified gems (maybe more items?) display their prices before they are identified. This prevents or hinders the possibility of counterfit items such as shards of glass vs real gems, pyrite vs real gold, etc.
The correct fix for this type of thing is to have 'unidentified_name' and 'undintified_value' type of fields (probably some others, like unidentified_face is also needed). Right now, a lot of the identification logic is hard coded into the server, with special coding for things like potions.