Preciousness belongs to all gems
Gems have fascinated the humankind since ancient times and it is known that they have forcefully influenced myths, legends and popular beliefs for centuries.
"A diamond is forever", it is known! But perhaps not everyone knows that even the blue of a beautiful aquamarine can give indelible emotions over time….
Still. Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen of unquestionable royalty, felt such a visceral love for emeralds - the only gem she considered worthy of her beauty and to which she attributed magical powers – to the point that she was used to provide visiting dignitaries with an effigy of herself carved in large emeralds. But if it is true that - as Pliny the Elder argued in his Naturalis Historia - "in the world there is no more intense green than that of the emerald", what should we think of the bewitching green of a tsavorite garnet or the hypnotic green of a demantoid garnet or, again, the fascinating green of a chrome tourmaline?
We then discover that some of these beliefs in the course of history have turned into commonplaces and false myths - or, in more modern terms, "fake news and hoaxes" - which still today find their roots in collective thought. One of all is the improper and misleading distinction between "precious" stones and so-called "Semi-precious" stones, which on the one hand continues to create confusion among consumers, on the other hand continues to produce significant distortions in the gemstone market!
The term "semi-precious" was first introduced in the second half of the 19th century carrying the commercial meaning of "lower value than a precious stone". Only in 1904 we read the first "official" classification between "precious" and "semi-precious" stones by a chemist: Max Bauer. He considered diamonds, corundums (rubies and sapphires) and emeralds (beryl) to be precious stones, based on the procurement costs at the time of his scientific studies. Since then, other gems, even if of value, are commonly - and wrongly - classified as "semi-precious".
Yeah: "wrongly"! Because it is undoubtedly legitimate to question the reliability and correctness of this distinction if we consider that even today there are material hurdles in outlining the "objective" benchmarks to assess and catalogue the value of gems! Even more so, if we consider that the aforementioned "historical" classification was defined by a professor on the basis of prices and market trends in the early 1900s!
It is no coincidence, therefore, that in today's professional market this classification has lost any significance, as dealers and traders (... not yet in the showcase!) set the economics by giving priority to the beauty and rarity of a stone, without considering whether it falls into the ‘precious’ or ‘semiprecious’ classification: for example, an Alexandrite of the Urals, or an authentic unheated Paraiba Tourmaline or a Demantoid Garnet can be worth much more than a ruby or a sapphire or an emerald, even of high quality!
Not a surprise when, looking at the historical price trends of different gems, you can find evidence that valuations of the so-called "Precious", although increased over time, have not always outpaced those of "semi-precious" gems. Actually, in recent years, it has been the other way around.
On the other hand, it does not take a rocket scientist to prove the questionability of the "historical" classification: just take a quick look at the royal jewels or the jewels of women style icons of the last century, to immediately acknowledge that beauty and elegance have always made no distinction!
Swedish royalty relied on romantic pink topazes to decorate what would have been one of the most famous sets in the world, while the nearby Norwegian monarchs decided in the 19th century to embellish their crown with amethysts, opals, peridots, chrysoprase, topazes and tourmalines alongside the more famous sapphires and emeralds.
Leaving the world of nobility and entering that of the star system, we find numerous other examples: Barbara Hutton - an American socialite (today we would call her ‘influencer’) of the first half of the 20th century - on her wedding day showed off a splendid necklace made up of 27 pearls of extremely rare quality jadeite, making it the most expensive jade necklace in the world;
Hélène Rochas, a French model and entrepreneur, boasted in her private collection an elegant necklace created especially for her by Maison Cartier and composed of 7 strands of aquamarine beads closed by a buckle with glitter pavé and a majestic central kunzite of over 60ct. And so on.
To sum it up, for every shade of color, the earth gives us many gems of great charm, each with its own history and its own value and market: a value, therefore, which - as for any good traded on a market - changes over time, being determined by the harsh law of supply-demand. In our opinion, therefore, any cataloging of stones by "preciousness", fixed and unchanging over time, is technically unfounded, as it would not be able to keep up with the unstoppable continuous evolution of society and the market.