Spessartine Garnet (Mandarin Garnet)

Item Description

The Garnet Group features many different species, several of which represent all of the gems you'll find on the market. Garnets are incredibly diverse, found in essentially every color of the rainbow. The finest orange color Garnets in the modern era of gems are the superb Spessartines from Nigeria. These wonderful gems are some of the most popular and hard to find Garnets out there. The locality has been exhausted, and there is very little available on the market today. When these stones first hit the market in the early 2000s, they immediately were recognized as being some of the best orange color Garnets ever found. This stone is a good quality, saturated orange hue, very slightly included gemstone with a "Round Brilliant" cut. This material is almost totally pure in manganese and has very little iron content, which is why the stone is so orange and not red as is often the case with Spessartine. This gem is what is being marketed as "Mandarin Garnet", because of the orange color. This particular hue is nearly exclusive to these Garnet gems and that is why it has become so popular and in some cases very pricey. Years ago, I saw a gem company on television selling material with the same color as this stone for $1,800 per carat! Be sure to snag this stone at a great price, as there will not be any more available as far as I can tell.