Andradite Garnet (Geode / "Coconut") (new find)

Item Description

Starting last year (2018) one of our good friends in Peru came to us with a very small parcel of new, unusual and interesting Andradite Garnets specimen. We were told the locality was Pampa Blanca, but we have never received confirmation on this information. Apparently they were all collected by a few individuals over a couple days, and no more specimens have been found, so we may never seen them again. These pieces were called "coconuts" by the men who found them, as they form in hollow geode-like "balls", which are in turn cracked open to show that they formed in multiple generations / layers showing Garnets of different colors. This piece is a partial coconut showing a dark reddish-brown exterior trapezohedral Garnet crystals - with the largest crystal measuring 1.1 cm across - and the broken edges show multi-layered banding with various hues of green, golden and brown. You can see the center of the piece hosts more golden-brown crystals, but there is also a small zone with yellow colored Andradites (the largest measuring about 5 mm). The piece is contacted around the periphery, but there are several undamaged trapezohedral crystals all over. A bit of associated Epidote and Quartz can be seen on the outside for a nice touch. These are certainly strange and unique Garnets, and this piece would fit nicely into any worldwide collection, a Peruvian suite or a collection of unusual mineral. Valued at $450.