White / Colorless Grossular Garnet (fluorescent) (New Find!)

Item Description

From a brand new find this past summer (June 2018) in an undisclosed locality in El Dorado County, California. We purchased a handful of these exciting and interesting specimens from a good friend at the Denver Show in September, and unfortunately no more were available. These specimens do not resemble any Grossular - or any Garnet for that matter - that we've seen from any locality in the United States. As a matter of fact, the only other colorless Grossulars that I can think of are those from the famous Jeffrey Mine in Quebec, Canada. These new California specimens are not only intriguing for their lack of color (a sign of chemical purity), but they show and odd soft pinkish-orange fluorescence under UV light! Species of Garnet are typically not fluorescent, so this new material is really interesting, different and special. This attractive specimen is loaded with small (up to about 3 mm), sharp, lustrous, gemmy, well-formed, colorless modified trapezohedral crystals on matrix. The material has been nicknamed "Galaxy Garnet", which is a nice marketing term to identify these unique specimens from what is for now an isolated find. If you collect Garnets, minerals of California / United States or fluorescent species, don't miss out on this attractive and distinctive Garnet specimen.