Spessartine Garnet (excellent crystals)

Item Description

These beautiful and soon-to-be-classic Spessartines from the Wushan Mine are some of the most easily recognizable and iconic Garnet specimens from any world locality. They stand as some of the most attractive and highly displayable pieces to come out of any discovery in China. This fantastic cabinet sized specimen features dozens upon dozens of very sharp, highly lustrous, gemmy, gorgeous orange color crystals of Spessartine Garnet showing predominantly dodecahedral faces with wonderful striations, which measure up to 8 mm across sitting on matrix. The crystals are larger than average for the locality, and the GLOW with color when backlit. The piece is in excellent condition, as I can't find any major damage with the naked eye. It's important to note that all of the Garnets are sharp, smooth and glistening showing no signs of etched / pitted faces. When it comes to Garnet, there are thousands of localities around the world to produce specimens, but it's honestly not terribly common to find wonderful orange colored (manganese-rich) crystals like this, let alone on a full sized cabinet display specimen like this. Valued at $5,000 for size and quality of the crystals, and relative rarity on the market now.
Ex Dr. Stephen Smale Collection. Along with amassing one of the finest private mineral collections in the world, Steve is a renowned mathematician. His accomplishments include being awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 along with being the awarded the Wolf Prize in mathematics in 2007. You can read Steve's bio on the Mineralogical Record website ( https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/smalestephen/ ) or on Wikipedia.