European intellectuals "re-discovered" the work of Aristotle in the 12th century mainly by way of the their Arabic translation, and Albertus Magnus (d. 1280), Dominican naturalist wrote Book of Minerals, a treatise of (noble) stones and metals (Wycoff trans. 1967). He compiled this treatise, based also on his empirical observation, in addition to the classical works like Aristotle, Galen, and Avicenna as well.

In addition to a kind of metallurgy and chemical natures of individual minerals, Albertus alludes to the alleged "efficacy" of various gemstones - this kind of descriptions reflect contemporary way of thinking of natural magic as well as a bit of empirical science/ medicine.

On the other hand, variants of the metals mentioned by Albertus are really limited, to our disappointment: only quicksilver, lead, tin, silver, copper, gold and iron have individual chapters in his work. To compare Albertus' work with the metallurgical treatise like Georg Agricola's de re Metallica (1556), you'll be aware of the development of mining and refining technology occurred in the end of the Middle Ages (Hoover & Hoover trans. 1950).

Among listed metals:

• Lead: used not only as alloy, but also in cupellation to refine the silver in Later Middle Ages.
• Tin: used as alloy (pewter). Cornwall has been known as an exporter of tin across Europe even prior to the Middle Ages (or further, dates back to the Bronze Age).
• Silver: Silver coin had been the basic unit of coinage in western Europe/ Eurasia since the time of Charlemagne (d. 814) for long. Now isotopic and other scientific analysis reveals the change of the provenance of silver circulated across Eurasia.
• From the 9th to the 10th century, Islamic dirham flowed into north-western Europe, mainly by way of Russian waterways. The Rus', or the Vikings is said to have an important role of this trade, exchanging slave and fur with silver from the Middle East as well as Central Asia - scientific analysis (bismuth contained in silver) reveals that silver minted by Samanid Emirates had originally been mined in now north-western Afganistan.
• On the other hand, in the late 13th and early 14th century, another eastern silver flowed into Europe, then mainly from south-western China (former kingdom of Dali). The conquest of Mongols (Yuan) triggered this export, in form of silver ingot (Cf. Kuroda 2009). Scientific analysis of silver (with antimony as an impurity minted in London) also confirms the Chinese origin.

Some minerals neither of gemstone nor of metals were also important to medieval Europeans, and a few of them are also mentioned by Albertus in his Book of Minerals. To give an example, alum was used as fixing material to dye woolen cloth, but alum mines in Europe had not been discovered until the late 15th century. So, Europeans relied on alum imported from Asia Minor, mainly by Italian (Genoese) merchants (Spufford 2002: 334).

References:

• Hoover, Herbert C. & Lou H. Hoover (trans.). De re metallica: Translated from the first Latin edition of 1556. London: Dover, 1950.
• Wycoff, Dorothy (trans.). Book of Minerals. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967.

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• Kuroda, Akinobu. “The Eurasian Silver Century, 1276–1359: Commensurability and Multiplicity.” Journal of Global History 4, no. 2 (2009): 245–69. doi:10.1017/S1740022809003143.
• Spufford, Peter. Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe. London: Thames & Hudson, 2002.