Diamonds are popular gemstones surrounded by popular misconceptions. We'll tell you how they became so prized and debunk some of those diamond myths, too.
I was going to point out that some of the stones you mentioned are semiprecious stones but it turns out that “gemstone” actually includes precious and semiprecious stones. Also, the distinction between the two is arbitrary and mostly based on how expensive they were in the Copper Age. TIL.
The split of semiprecious vs precious is essentially 18th century marketing BS, it’s not relevant nowadays, even to jewelers.
Some of the most expensive stones aren’t even part of the “precious” stones because they were discovered recently, and since the term is obsolete even to jewelers there’s no one to push the term on those new gems, like Alexandrite (which is more expensive than diamond)
Rubies and sapphires are both the same mineral with different impurities but this is very wrong. Tourmaline, garnet, spinel, emerald, topaz, beryl, …?
I was going to point out that some of the stones you mentioned are semiprecious stones but it turns out that “gemstone” actually includes precious and semiprecious stones. Also, the distinction between the two is arbitrary and mostly based on how expensive they were in the Copper Age. TIL.
It’s so arbitrary that Amethyst used to be one of the most expensive precious stones, before huge mines were discovered and it lost its status
The split of semiprecious vs precious is essentially 18th century marketing BS, it’s not relevant nowadays, even to jewelers.
Some of the most expensive stones aren’t even part of the “precious” stones because they were discovered recently, and since the term is obsolete even to jewelers there’s no one to push the term on those new gems, like Alexandrite (which is more expensive than diamond)
Beryl and emerald are also (basically) the same thing. Just different impurities giving a different color.