Learn About Precious and Semi-Precious Gemstones

Any mineral that is valued for its beauty or its toughness is known as a gemstone. There are different kinds of gemstones such as rubies, diamonds, emeralds, tigers-eye, pyrite, sapphires, and turquoise. The value of a gemstone is determined by several factors.

Among all the different types of gemstones, some types are more valued than others. There may be several reasons for this valuation. The gemstone can be a very rare type of gemstone, a gemstone currently in the fashion trend, or a gemstone that is more beautiful than others. If you closely examine the above-mentioned criteria used to differentiate gemstones, you will see that these criteria are highly variable. For instance, until the discovery of large deposits of amethyst in Brazil, amethyst was considered to be a precious gemstone. After the finding of these deposits, amethyst was considered to be a semi-precious gemstone.

Presently, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires are considered to be precious gemstones. Diamond is definitely valued for its exotic beauty, rarity, and toughness. It is perhaps the most precious gemstone of all the types of gemstones; a position that it has held for a very long time. Rubies, sapphires, and emeralds are valued for both their rarity and beauty. These gemstones will command a higher price in the market than other types of gemstones. They are used in luxurious jewelry including rings, bracelets, and necklaces. Semi-precious gemstones are gemstones that don't command a significant value when compared to precious-gemstones. Gemstones such as tigers-eye, moonstone, turquoise, sunstone, and jasper are considered to be semi-precious gems. Overall, there are no specific guidelines that can be used to distinguish between precious-gemstones and semi-precious gemstones.

However, there are established guidelines that are followed to determine the value of diamonds. When categorizing a diamond, four factors of the diamond are considered, namely its cut, clarity, color, and carat. Cut refers to the expertise with which the diamond has been shaped. The clarity refers to the degree of perfection of the diamond. The carat refers to the weight of the diamond. For colorless diamonds, color refers to the degree of clearness of the diamond while color refers to the intensity of color, in colored diamonds. To grade a diamond, it is examined under a microscope having 10x magnification. Other types of gemstones are still graded by examining them with the naked eye.

Investing in gemstones should never be done. The value of most precious gems such as diamonds varies at almost a parallel rate to economic inflation or deflation. Therefore the actual value of the gemstone will remain the same. This fact shows that gemstones should not be used as an investment, but will serve as good storages of wealth, especially during times of economic fluctuations.