Over the last few years (since the very late 1990's), the market has seen some truly outstanding Spessartine Garnet specimens coming from China. I want to stress that finely crystallized Spessartines are rare from any locality, and there have truly only been two localities in the past 40 years that have produced collector quality Spessartine Garnet specimens of any significance. These localities are the Ramona area of San Diego County, California and the Northern Areas of Pakistan. Keep in mind that the large percentage of contemporary Brazilian Spessartines are off matrix, crudely crystallized, highly etched and do not have top rich orange color and the classic old Spessartines from Elba, Italy are virtually impossible to obtain, and most specimens feature relatively small crystals (only a few mm). Garnets in general, are very difficult to find in finely crystallized matrix specimens with top color, luster, sharpness and displayability. For such a broad and well known group of species, Garnets for the most part are quite elusive when it comes to top shelf, competition quality pieces.

The bottom line is that these specimens are sensational quality and you cannot find better Spessartines crystals on matrix with such rich orange color from any other contemporary locality. These new Chinese Spessartines for intents and purposes are truly some of the most exemplary pieces found. Most specimens feature textbook crystallization with mirror bright faces, water-clear clarity and rich, vivid colors. Most of the these pieces show rich orange hues, showing that there is an absence of Iron content in the crystals, meaning that these are nearly pure Manganese rich Spessartine Garnet crystals. Furthermore, it must be noted that these specimens show tremendous associations, whether it be with light colored, (almost "Alpine" quality) Smoky Quartz crystals, or dark (almost black) "morion" Smoky Quartz crystals creating a very distinct color contrast, especially when set against the lighter Orthoclase matrix and accented by the light green Muscovite crystals. These pieces are also rising in price across the board as the savvy Chinese dealers have become aware of their value, so the days of buying good Spessartines cheap seem to be gone. That combined with the fact that the locality has been producing less and less material over the last few years leads one to believe that these amazing Garnets may soon be a thing of the past. No collection is complete without one of these first-class Spessartines.

Lastly, as per usual for most of the contemporary Chinese localities, the vast majority of the material found is truly sub par quality, and it takes great patience and a trained eye to select the top pieces out of so many available. The following specimens represent a cull out of literally thousands of pieces over a few years to bring you this unique mix (no two pieces are exactly alike) showing the wide variety of associations from different pockets.
 

Enjoy !!

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