What do precious stones look like

Sapphire is usually blue but there are many other colours that depend on the chemical composition of the stone: yellows, oranges, greens, etc. Ruby is distinguished by its red tones, which can go through a gradient from pink to purple, to slightly brown. The most sought-after, and rarest, is undoubtedly the bright red colour. Ruby often has a secondary colour. However, the more pronounced these are purple or orange the lower the value of the ruby.

Other countries such as Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand and Madagascar are also renowned for the brilliance and exceptional purity of their rubies. Emerald is green in colour and can vary from pale green to deep green. More sensitive to shocks than other precious stones, it is generally mounted in emerald cut to limit the risks during setting.

Emeralds are usually small in size. The larger ones are very rare and can be up to 20 times more valuable than a diamond of the same size. Today, the most beautiful emeralds come from deposits in Colombia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Brazil.

The white diamond is the best known of all. However, it has an incredible palette of colours. There are almost as many shades of white as there are letters in the alphabet D being the most flawless and Z the richest in yellow highlights. In addition to its white shades, the diamond has many more or less unusual shades. The rarest is the red diamond, of which there are very few. Diamond is the birthstone for April and the gem of the tenth and sixtieth wedding anniversaries.

Learn more about the 7 Factors to Consider when Buying a Diamond. A variety of the corundum family, ruby is famous for its deep red hue and vibrant glow. Bearing the color of love and desire, ruby is the ideal romantic gift for a woman in love. Over the years, finest-quality rubies have broken auction price records, commanding the highest per-carat value of all colored gems.

Pure rubies exhibit thin inclusions called needles. Ruby is the birthstone for July and the gem of the fifteenth and fortieth wedding anniversaries. Learn How to Choose a Quality Ruby. Known for its intense green shade and a clear depth of colour that very few gems possess, emerald is the precious stone that symbolizes renewal and hope.

The rich green stone has been a gem of fascination for royalty in the past centuries. Cleopatra, the famous Queen of Egypt, had a soft spot for lush emeralds and loved wearing them.

Gem cutters have hence developed a special cut called emerald cut which gives the stone a rectangular or square shape. Emeralds are normally cast in yellow gold, but their vivid colour is greatly intensified by noble platinum and white gold, too. Emerald is the birthstone for May and the gem of the twentieth and thirty-fifth wedding anniversaries. Traditionally, these four precious stones have been the most expensive and sought after stones.

The list goes on and on, but some of the more common ones are: alexandrite, agate , amethyst , aquamarine , garnet , lapis lazuli, moonstone, opal, pearl, peridot, rose quartz, spinel, tanzanite , tourmaline, turquoise and zircon.

This separation between precious and semi precious has no real scientific backing. For example, emerald is a variety of a beryl, so are aquamarines. Emerald is precious while aquamarine is semi precious. When this categorization came about, it was mainly due to the value and rarity differences between the 4 precious gemstones and the rest.

Today some semi precious gemstones can be worth much more than a precious stone. As an example, many natural pearls garner huge prices, often worth more than a low quality precious diamond, ruby, emerald or sapphire. Spinels are another example. Additionally, many semi precious stones can be more rare than some of the precious. Demantoid garnets or tsavorite garnets and many other semi precious gemstones are hard to find, harder to mine and produced in much lower qualities than the precious gemstones.