Agate, a kind of chalcedony mineral, is one of the earliest beautiful stones discovered by human beings. In Chinese ancient books, red and yellow agates are called "Qiongyu", "Chiyu" and "Huoyu", while jewelry, utensils and carvings made from them are generally called agates in the cultural and archaeological circles. According to historical records, the word agate originated from Buddhist scriptures, and the Sanskrit name is "Asmapo", which means "horse brain", and it is one of the "seven treasures" of Buddhism. After Buddhism was introduced into China, ancient names such as Redjade and Firejade were gradually lost, so it was renamed Agate.

Strictly speaking, agate refers to the chalcedony with concentric layered belts, parallel belts or various colored belts. The ancients named agate because of its patterns, such as silk-wrapped agate, cypress agate brocade, brocade red agate, bamboo leaf agate, nauqu agate, sauce-spotted agate and so on. Monochrome chalcedony is not agate. However, people are more accustomed to naming agate by color. After the name of agate became popular, the varieties with red, blue, purple, green, yellow and white (transparent) colors in monochromatic chalcedony were called red agate, yellow agate, blue agate, purple agate and green agate, among which red agate and yellow agate were the most common.

In addition, agate also contains water bile agate, which is famous for its inclusions. This agate has a closed cavity, which is filled with water or aqueous solution, with high transparency and no cracks and defects. It is an excellent jade carving material. Agate has always been one of the commonly used jade materials in China jade industry, which can be regarded as a low-grade jade material. Agate is also widely used. It can be used as medicine, gem, jade, jewelry, handicraft materials, abrasive tools, instrument bearings and so on.

Jade carving technology is used when making agate utensils, but because agate not only has many colors, but also has the phenomenon that many colors are concentrated on one agate material, the making technology of agate utensils pays more attention to the use of colors, that is, agate utensils with "clever colors" or "beautiful colors", so it can be regarded as first-class agate works of art. ..

From the collection point of view, the threshold of agate is actually not high, but it needs a unique vision. As the saying goes, "There are thousands of agates and ten thousand kinds of jade", so the first problem to be solved in investing in agate collection is to find out the types of agates, and the value of different kinds of agate collection is naturally different. Also, the prices of natural agate and artificially dyed agate are quite different.