Spessartine Garnet From Tanzania

NOTE ABOUT LIGHTING: We tried to backlight minimally to make colors and "glow" accurate. When backlit strongly, these garnets positively glow with color, and look more gemmy. However, you are seeing them here as they would look in a display case in all shots except the ones where the crystals are clearly sitting on a light plate.

LOCATION: the full locality information for this deposit is near the town of Loliondo, close to Serengeti National Park and 7 km from the Kenyan border, W-NW of the north end of Lake Natron. It is closed to heavy traffic and on Maasai tribal lands.

I think the pictures state the obvious - these are shockingly large, faceted-looking "jewels" from nature that happen to be gemmy spessartine garnets of unprecedented size and quality. These have quietly been emerging from a small prospect in remote Tanzania and hoarded for sale at the Tucson show. I was tipped off by a gem dealer who was buying it up for cutting and faceting! Out of a large quantity mined, most are representative garnets by worldwide standards, or "almost killers" marred by too many internal dark veils and inclusions. Perhaps 1 in 100 is fully formed and translucent, colored an even orange to orange-red color. For the top specimens as shown here, the only comparables that can be even be thought to compete in this game are from two small and historic finds : a few , perhaps under half a dozen, major specimens from the Little 3 Mine in San Diego (and these although large and colorful aren't as sharply formed); or the small floater gem crystals found in Marienfluss Namibia in the early 1980s (though they had not the color saturation and size of the pieces shown here). These garnets are so shocking in their 3-dimensionality, color, and translucency that I believe they simply redefine what you can expect in a garnet crystal specimen. In other words, to my way of thinking, this is not just another "locality garnet", rather these define the standard now to which other garnet crystals from other localities should themselves be seen to measure up to. I made a quick trip ahead to Tucson before the show to negotiate and buy up the largest lot of this material to have been mined and hoarded over December and January of 2008 (sadly, the good specimens already were known to command prices relative to their weight in facet and carving rough). My understanding is that some material trickled out already at the show, though mostly of inferior quality, and the prices have already been soaring at the show and at the source as people realized what they had in hand. Note that due to the color saturation and thickness of these crystals, and slight internal inclusions that add up, the camera has a hard time conveying the depths of color and translucency you see in real life: they are MUCH better in person!

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SPESSTN-81 - Spessartine Garnet - AUS$ 257
Loliondo, near Serengeti National Park, Tanzania
thumbnail, 1.3 x 1.1 x 1.1 cm

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