gemstone is also called a precious stone, someone also likes to call it as semi-precious tone. Though gemstone has two name, one is precious stone, another is semi-precious stone, which is because of the different definitions which can change over time and vary with culture, it is really a hard matter to decide and determine what the different constitutes of the stone.

It is used to make jewelry or other adornments. Most gemstones are hard, but some soft minerals have good lustre or other physical properties, so they are used in jewelry to get an aesthetic value. Gems are characterized from the aspects of refractive index, hardness, cleavage, dispersion, specific gravity, fracture, and lustre.

Color is the physical characteristics of a valuable stone, and another determining factor of the value of a gemstone is called water. Water is an archaic term that refers to the combination of color and transparency in gemstones.

But nowadays people do not make the value distinction by the mineral variety in the trade. Depending on the brand name of the designer, market supply, fashion trends, treatments etc., many gemstones are used in the most expensive jewelry. However, no matter how expensive the gemstone jewelry is, diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds still have a higher reputation and almost exceed those jewelry with other gemstones.

The gemstone is well-known as rare and unusual stone, which means it is infrequently and high quality. They are nearly known and distinguished except the experts.

Aside from the diamond, the ruby, sapphire, emerald, pearl (though it is not a gemstone, but always belongs to jewelry) and opal are considered to be precious at first. Later up to the discoveries of bulk amethyst in Brazil in last two centuries, amethyst was considered a precious stone as well, which can be going back to ancient Greece. In the last century, some stones such as aquamarine were very popular and regarded as precious stone as the same.

The price of gemstone is fluctuated sharply and changeable easily, but also can be stable at a firm level. The former one is usually the normal jewelry with gemstone, the latter one is mainly the jewelry such as diamond. Generally the price of larger stone per carat is higher than the smaller stone even chippings.

It is a good thing to know more about the jewelry or gemstone, when you want to buy a gift to send to someone, you can choose better one.