A Rainbow of Color: Garnet Mineral Collection

Very nice specimens, Mrs. Pat and jakesrocks!! Mrs. Pat, I'm not sure, but your specimen may be from Arizona or Alaska.

Awesome shot of your gorgeous spessartine specimen with your new stand, jakesrocks. Sure wish I hadn't seen the listings of books on garnets. ahem. Those are nice prices for the one on collecting garnets.

Thank you, washingtonrocks!!

Here's an article that gemfeller wrote. Rick, if you want me to remove the link, please let me know, but I think it's a wonderful article on garnets (get no respect!).

Garnet: It Gets No Respect by gemfeller:

www.virtualfundy.com/Volumes/001/garnet.htm

Dr. Hanneman sent me the pamplets that were included in his Naming Gem Garnets book. I really like his classification of garnets. I asked Dr. Hanneman to sign everything that he sent to me.

gemologyproject.com/wiki/index.php?title=Garnet

Rick, is Dr. Hanneman still accepting contact through the Gemology Online forum, or do you have to look for his materials elsewhere? I think Pretty Rock and the Mineral Lab website were selling his materials, but haven't seen any of his materials on garnets.

I often view Alan Guisewite's website and recommend it. He has an awesome mineral collection, and his garnet specimens are amazing. He has a green pyrope specimen, and a chart on color change garnets from different localities.

Here's a pic of the green pyrope. I've seen a specimen or two being sold on eBay and John Betts has pics of green pyrope on his website.


Green pyrope from Afghanistan from the Alan Guisewite collection
Source: www.cs.cmu.edu/~adg/adg-piimages.html

Here's the chart created by Alan on color change garnets and rare garnets.

www.cs.cmu.edu/~adg/adg-pgpimages.html

gemfeller, you're right about the relationship HGG has with Vesuvianite/Idocrase. Quite often the two materials are combined in the same stone with all kinds of variations in the ratio of HGG to Vesuvianite. I've found some stones that even have a definitive, visible border-line where the vesuvianite meets the HGG, and some where the two are so intertwined with each other that different lab analyses will yield differing results as to percentages. Of the several stones I've sent in to be analyzed, about a third have come back as pure Hydrogrossular. Interesting stuff!

That's a gorgeous specimen, jakesrocks!

washingtonrocks, would you please post some pics of your hydrogrossular specimens? I enjoyed seeing the one in the tumbling thread with your green beauties.

Thanks, Rick! I googled "Garnet: It Gets No Respect" and found it! I thought other members may also be interested in Dr. Hanneman's materials, especially garnets.

Hi, Roller! No, haven't been to New York, but hope you'll share pics with us of your trip to Gore Mountain to search for almandine.

Have been suffering from garnet withdrawals. Received this nice grossular from a good friend in the mail yesterday.


Grossular garnet on matrix
Lime Point, Beaver County, Utah

Very nice collection. I also didn't know about the variations of garnets. Thank You for sharing. I learned a lot from pictures .

gingerkid

Jan

Awesome garnet collection.  I have quite a few almandine garnets and a couple pink and greenish grossularite garnets.  Nothing compared to your fabulous collection.  

Here  is one I found in 1989.  I wish I would have kept it.  It has been cut polished and sold.  I kept one large 6-Ray cab from it. I'll have to see if I can find the cab to photograph.  It's still dopped but I estimate the cab at over 100 carats.  If I can find it, I'll post a photo.  Sorry about the crummy photo of an old photo.

I almost threw it out because it seemed too big to be a garnet.  Luckily I noticed how heavy it was.  When I rubbed it with my thumb, a flat crystal face appeared.  Needles to say I was pretty excited.  It was about 8.5 ounces.



Here's a little better photo




Later

Brent

Great collection..........MrP

Oops

Here are a couple of crystals.