Spessartine Garnet

We purchased a huge number of Tanzanian Spessartines specimens when this find was fresh, back around 2005 or so and are now legendary, but largely gone from the market. Found on Maasai land, no large-scale digging was possible and they were harvested with hand tools from the top layers of a small skarn deposit. The better garnets, such as this one, were in the top layers. Lower down, the quality dropped off dramatically in both color and shape so there was little incentive for further digging after the first 2 seasons of finds. We sold most of them years ago but found a few left in the warehouse from the old find, almost 20 years back now! This 45 gram crystal has particularly juicy blood orange color and is one of the most symmetric for its size sharpness. It is complete all around except for the slightest little ding or contact at one tip out of all of them. It has about the best natural luster of any in its size range for this material. In person, you can see this extra few percent difference if you were to compare to others. It has the top color and glows, especially when backlit!