Spessartine

New find of Spessartine Garnets from Tanzania. The best of the find have top "citrus" orange color, are complete all around, have sharp crystal edges, and have a minimum or no black inclusions. The variation in size and quality in this lot is great, with the large 6 and 7 cm crystals being very rare and fine for their combination of large size, completeness, good color, and lack of black inclusions. The vast majority of the find are partial crystals or shards and even the more included specimens on these pages are complete crystals, making them better than average for the find by this fact alone. The miners who find the crystals have been breaking up the crystals to get at the substantial and valuable gem rough inside - the faceted stones are very fine with a superb orange color.
These are found approximately 4 kilometers from the Kenyan border in norther Tanzania, Loliando is the nearest town. There has been a lot of speculation on the origin of these garnets. My understanding is that these are from a near surface alluvial deposit, which would explain some of the more rounded edges found on some of the garnets. I have one matrix piece here which gives some insight into their formation - the Garnet is on and somewhat intergrown with massive black Braunite and is associated with red Mica.

View the Spessartine crystals

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