Your Gemstones Guide: Semiprecious Versus Precious Gemstones

October 17, 2024

A gemstone is a mineral, rock, or organic material that is cut and polished to be used in jewelry or other adornments. Gemstones are valued for their beauty, durability, and rarity, and come in two forms: precious and semiprecious.

Precious? Or Semiprecious?

What makes one stone precious and another semiprecious? It used to be based just on the price of the gemstone. But, thankfully, today there are more factors that come into play when determining whether a stone is precious, semiprecious, or neither. These factors include the quality of the stone, its hardness, how rare it is, and its earliest known history or the place of its origin.

Precious and Historically Valued

Experts only consider four stones to be truly "precious." These are often referred to as the Big 4: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. They are also the birthstones for the April (diamond), May (emerald), July (ruby), and September (sapphire). These gemstones have traditionally been the most desirable and most costly, which makes their categorization as "precious" understandable.

In ancient times, these gemstones were most often raw or cut and polished and placed into settings to adorn religious vestments, jewelry, crowns, scepters—even wedding gowns! Today, people want them for the jewelry they wear to their most luxurious events—and surprisingly, for everyday wear.

Semi Precious and Highly Desirable

Experts deemed many other stones semiprecious. These stones fell into this category by being somewhat less rare and, therefore, less costly, but still highly valued for their unique beauty. Because these semiprecious stones were more abundant, they were very often used for adornment and for jewelry making and ancient peoples found them quite desirable. They were often used in folk or tribal ceremonial garments, jewelry, pouches, and headdresses.

Included in the list of semiprecious stones are these offered at Style Dots: Malachite, Howlite, Turquoise, Flashstone, and Tiger Eye.

Semiprecious Stones: Unique Identifying Characteristics

While most of us are very familiar with the Big 4 precious stones and how stunning they are, many of us may not be aware of the attributes of these lesser known, or semiprecious, stones.

Malachite

Malachite is a copper carbonate hydroxide mineral that is opaque and green-banded. It's available in many shades of green, from pastel to dark, and can have spots that resemble peacock feathers.

Malachite was used to stimulate the immune system, reduce pain and inflammation, and to help with arthritis and asthma.

Howlite

Howlite is a white or light gray stone with brown or black veins in an erratic, often web-like pattern. It was discovered near Nova Scotia in 1868 and named after Henry How, the geologist and mineralogist who brought it to the scientific community's attention.

Traditionally, people used howlite as a calming stone to reduce anxiety and anger. It's only found in the US and Canada.

Tiger Eye

Tiger eye has bands in golds and browns—some opaque, some translucent— with flecks of sand and iron stripes and a silky luster. It's a form of quartz making it extremely durable and resilient.

Tiger Eye is also known by other names including Hawk's Eye, Falcon's Eye, Zebra Tiger's Eye, and Cat's Eye. It was often used to help with depression and balancing the endocrine system, as well as speeding up the metabolism.

Historically, in some places of the world, Tiger Eye was more valuable than gold.

Turquoise

Turquoise forms when groundwater rich in copper and acid reacts with minerals that contain aluminum and phosphorus. It usually forms in iron-rich limonite or sandstone, which can result in markings that look like veins, spiderwebs, or patches.

Red Turquoise is formed when volcanic rock reacts to copper deposits.

Turquoise is one of December's birthstones. It's traditionally been used as the "stone of communication" in that it was used to encourage people's enthusiasm and inspire their creativity.

While turquoise is available in many colors, its iconic color is light blue.

Flashstone

Flashstone is a crystal that displays flashes of color when light hits it from different angles. The semiprecious flashstone is labradorite. It can display flashes of blue, green, gold, and purple. The "flash" is caused by light diffracting off the stone's closely-spaced layers of feldspar (minerals that contain varying amounts of potassium, sodium, calcium, and sometimes lithium)—a process called labradorescence. It has a glass-like luster

Flashstone was traditionally used to enhance a person's intuition, protect them against negative energy, and inspire their creativity.

At Style Dots, we’ve taken semiprecious stones with pure, natural style and placed them into snap jewelry settings that enhance their beauty and rich history. We then offer you contemporary foundations—necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings—to snap them into, perfectly showcasing their unique traits.

Of course, if they provide meaning and value to you in your jewelry, aren't all gemstones precious?

Find your perfect semiprecious gemstone today at StyleDots.com.

This is an update of an article previously published on November 23, 2022.

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