STONE

Nobody buys stone off a villager, only the other way around. The Mason takes it in at apprentice for 20 stone per 1 emerald, and that rate is the weakest of everything his stonecutter buys off a player, cheaper materials like clay ball and nether quartz all clear the same slot faster.

A furnace turns 1 cobblestone into it, one for one, and that furnace recipe is the only way the game makes it. Mine a placed block with anything but Silk Touch and it reverts to cobblestone before it lands in the inventory, so the block itself is mostly a byproduct of smelting rather than something dug up whole. A crafting grid also turns one stone into a stone button, and two side by side make a pressure plate.

None of that history matters to the trade price. What makes the offer worth knowing is the shape of it rather than the rate: a hopper minecart or an automatic villager farm turns any stone generator into a slow, steady drip of emeralds, and at this price it is the kind of trade nobody bothers running by hand for very long.

Hand 20 stone to a Mason who has reached Apprentice, and he pays 1 emerald back for it. The figure is fixed in the trade file rather than rolled inside a range, so a second Mason at the same tier quotes the identical rate.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 20 stone, from the Mason, and nothing else on that list asks for more. No villager sells stone back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Mason takes 20 stone a trade, 16 trades, 16 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

16 acacia boats against 384 flint for the same 16 emeralds, 24 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Shepherd at 10 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. Stone itself pays 20 an emerald, so 57 of the 72 ask less and 12 ask more.

A freshly employed Mason does not start with this row open. He needs 10 trade experience banked before apprentice unlocks, level 2 of five, which in practice means a few earlier trades with whatever else he had on offer first.

Once it is open, the slot takes 20 stone a time, 16 times before it locks, and a villager restocks at most twice a Minecraft day. Nothing about the trade itself, selling raw stone rather than a processed block, speeds that clock up or slows it down.

16 sales close the slot, and the wait after that runs 2 real minutes flat, no faster no matter how quickly the trades are clicked through. Two of those refills fit inside one Minecraft day, itself 20 real minutes long.

Worked that hard, one Mason clears 640 stone for 32 emeralds across a single day. A player with a stack ready to unload will empty the slot faster than that; the ceiling only matters for a farm feeding it continuously.

One trip, one restock: the Mason takes 320 stone across 16 trades before the slot locks, paying out 16 emeralds total. A cobblestone generator feeding a furnace is the honest way to keep that quantity coming without mining a single block by hand.

Where they go back: that Mason also sells bricks, his cheapest offer going the other direction, so the same stonecutter that buys stone cheap also sells building material cheap.

Also on the Mason's list: chiseled stone bricks, granite, andesite, diorite, polished andesite and polished granite.

Mined without Silk Touch, stone gives cobblestone, so a chest of smooth stone means someone either smelted it or carried an enchanted pickaxe. That single rule is why the Mason buying stone is buying effort rather than a raw material.

Through a stonecutter it becomes bricks, slabs, stairs, chiseled blocks and pillars at one block per item, no waste. Compared with the crafting grid, which charges more for the same shapes, the stonecutter is the reason a stone build is cheap.

Cobblestone smelts into stone, and stone smelted a second time becomes smooth stone, which is the pale flat block a blast furnace is built from. Three blocks out of one, two furnace passes apart.

Smooth stone slabs are the ones that read as a modern floor, and they only come from that second smelt, which is why a build using them costs more fuel than it looks like.

A stonecutter takes ordinary stone straight to bricks, stairs, slabs and the chiselled version with no waste at all, so the cutter pays for itself in the first wall.

The Mason wants 20 Stone per emerald, 320 for a full restock. A cobblestone generator gives endless cobblestone, and one trip through a furnace turns each block into Stone: How to Make a Cobblestone Generator in Minecraft.