Spessartine (uncommon Colorado locale)

Item Description

A nice thumbnail sized example of the classic Spessartine Garnets from the locality at Ruby Mountain in Colorado. This piece hosts a solitary sharp, lustrous, very deep red color crystal of Spessartine showing a combination of trapezohedral and dodecahedral faces measuring 3 mm on beige rhyolite matrix. This area used to be open to the public for collecting, but is now a National Monument, so all collecting is forbidden.
This piece comes from the collection of Willard W. Wulff (1904-1998) of Colorado Springs, Colorado, a prominent figure and collector of Colorado minerals. Wulff was one of the founding members of the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society in 1936. You can read Willard's bio on the Mineralogical Record website here (http://www.minrec.org/labels.asp?colid=1528) . Wulff personally collected this specimen.