Precious and semiprecious stones It is important for anyone to understand the difference between a precious stone and a semiprecious stone, but it is even more important for the merchant of it, since that will depend on the commercialization value of the piece. We have known about gems that have cost millions of dollars, and everything will depend on those characteristics that determine their authenticity or not. The scale of Mohs dates back to 1812, and was designed to determine on a numerical scale how resistant these minerals are called gems, when subjected to scratching or cutting of another mineral. As it turns out, the diamond is the only one that occupies the 10th position on that scale. We have Synthetic opal for sale. In this scale are other materials that allow in a laboratory test to determine the scale of each mineral that we know, although it is true, the scale has more than 200 years and is not a truly infallible method, it is taken as a reference to categorize each mineral, along with other tests that must be done. Properties of precious and semi precious stones It is important to know, that a gem must have which characteristics to consider it as precious, semiprecious or synthetic stone. There are many elements to take account, the main ones are: Beauty Within this feature the main thing is to consider the colour, there is a classification based on the colour of the stone, these are: With own colour (idiochromatic), colour by impurities (alchromatic), with optical effects (pseudo chromatic), gems with colour such as Green amethyst stone and colourless such as Synthetic blue sapphire. Durability The resistance of the stone is also an important feature, however this does not mean that it must be resistant against everything, but that it measures how much resistance the stone has, that is, if it falls within the category of: partition, fracture or resistance to the chemical and physical agents. Rarity or difficulty to get The fact that the stones are obtained from nature itself and that cannot be "duplicated" by any human machine with the same characteristics as the original such as Lab made sapphire, make the difficulty of achieving them increases not only economic but also accessibility value in general. We have Colombian emeralds for sale. Origin and growth It is important to know the true origin of each gem, and it is precisely a geological theme, since they come from the earth in its original state, which over the years have been formed in different ways, one of them is through the cooling of magma, formations that have been created in the depths of the earth, since this is where the greatest heat is concentrated and are usually composed of liquids and solids, hence we have volcanic rocks, as well as those that have undergone changes due to this heat to which they have been exposed; the other is through the sedimentation of minerals such as Hydrothermal emerald. The gems are usually located in the crust of the earth. Almost never at a depth greater than 40km, we know that in this layer of the earth there are three types of precious rocks, igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary.