All I can say is our template handles the display of prices identically to the std VM layout -
you can prove this by completely disabling Puremart
To do this just rename the folder
ROOT/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/html/com_virtuemart
to
ROOT/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/html/com_virtuemart2
if your using over-rides set them off as well in Configuration->Templates
I'm as confused by VM's silly meaningless price labelling as the next guy - please just experiment with or perhaps ask on the VM forums for exactly what you want..
Cheers