Gemstones in India date back thousands of years There are several reasons why Indian gems are so inexpensive. For starters, there are large amounts of high-quality stones available for mining; which means there's no shortage of raw materials for processing.

In fact, the Indian subcontinent is home to some of the world's oldest and most prolific gemstone mines, including those for diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. Though the Golconda mines are waning, gems of like quality are compared to this standard before consideration and appraisal.

The Star of India is a 563.35-carat (112.67 g) star sapphire, one of the largest such gems in the world.

Blue is a very desirable hue and only 0.1% of natural diamonds have a natural blue hue, hence they rule the list of most valuable gemstones. The blue colour in diamonds is because of the traces of the Boron element. Blue diamonds were first discovered in India and considered as the elemental symbol of royalty.