Spessartite, Fanta & Mandarin Garnet

Bright, lustrous and burning with a fireball orange color – spessartite garnet is a favorite of all gemstone savants. With an orange color that is peerless amongst other gems, a very bright luster, and only coming from a handful of mines world wide, it is no wonder that this gem is prized amongst cognoscente collector’s. Not surprisingly, prices for fine pieces are high.

A gem of extremely high refractive index ri refractive index that creates a brighter more adamantine diamond like lustyer than almost any other popular or collectible gem other than garnet. Combined with is bright orange color, spessartine garnet of a partcilaur color range is given a trade name.

Color in Spessartite Garnet

The first spessartites found were in the Spessart Mountains of Southern Germany back in the late 19th Century, and also in the USA’s San Diego area and Virginia. Neither of these mines produced enough gem material to be commercially viable.

In the early 1990’s in the area around the Kunene river in that straddles the border of Namibia and also Angola, spessartite garnets of an unusual brightness, luminosity and freedom from dark tones were discovered. Bright and exploding with color, these ultra rare garnets become highly sought after.

The name mandarin garnet became in used due to the mandarin orange, other stores say the name mandarin garnet comes from the fact in ancient China only high ranking officials, mandarins, were allowed to wear orange, thus conferring an air of exclusivity on the gem.

Color in spessartite garnet can range from a deep pure red hue all the way to intense yellows, with a myriad of saturation levels and overtones of darkness.

As spessartite moves through the color ranges, the value and price of mandarin spessartite in any given size and clarity falls and rises with enjoyability, beauty and vividness of color.

The chart above plots the range of color we can experience in spessartite garnet. While beauty is certainly subjective to personal tastes, the markets as whole value the middle section of this diagram. From left to right we see the gradation of hue as it moves from pure red, through to orange and towards yellow. The yellow color range in spessartite stops before any green hues creep, and likewise one the left the red section does not drift towards purple at all.

From top to bottom what we see is saturation running from very pale at the top, through the mid range into ideal saturation, and as we move towards the bottom we pick up the dark overtones of color.

While this diagram is theoretical, habitual occurrence of frequency

Finally as we move right over to the yellow hues you can see the potential for value detraction lies not with dark overtones which are almost never seen, but is with the lack of saturation – this is particularly prevalent with smaller mandarins that lack size and hence color-mass.

Fanta & Mandarin Garnet

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Where Spessartite Garnets Are Found

With the golden sunset hues that glow like hot coals and embers, spessartite has now been elevated to the position of a highly desirable collector’s gemstones. Unsurprisingly when gem prices go up in prices, new finds are made. It seems the Kunene River find sparked demand, which them stokes explorational of prospecting awareness which then gives way to new finds.

the color palette for fine spessartite changed

Marienfluss River, Namibia

When the Namibian deposit came online around 1991, the color palette for fine spessartite changed. The material coming out of Marienfluss, Kunene Region was an electric mandarin-orange hue, with some minor pink or red secondary that made it seem very pure and intense. The only drawback to this material was that it often had fine needles creating a silky appearance.

Nigeria

The Nigerian deposit was by far the the biggest as far as carats produced. This deposit in Iseyin, Oyo State, Nigeria produced material from dark reddish-orange, to cinnamon orange, to yellowish orange, to mandarin hues. This material is very clean compared to many other spessartite deposits and still holds strong orange colors.

Loliondo, Tanzania

Fanta & Mandarin Spessartite For Sale

A selection of fanta and mandarin spessartites for sale available to buy.

Spessartite Garnet Price Calculator

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Spessartite Garnet References & Further Reading