I love unusual gemstones, as you know, and if my gemstone dealer has anything of interest, no matter how tiny the production, he usually shows me first. So you can imagine my surprise when he had me guess what the three teaspoons of clean yellow material were that he pulled out of a little plastic bag a couple of weeks ago. I know Danburite to be clear or faint vanilla color but had never seen...

As you have probably noticed, I put nearly a half a dozen Mahenge spinels on my site in the last 2-3 weeks, and almost all of them sold.  What is going on? 

 

I haven’t written much about Mandarin garnets because I don’t really like orange as a color, and so I’ve ignored this gem for a long time.  But now I think I didn’t do it justice.

Spessartite, the garnet group that Mandarin garnet falls under, has only been on the gemstone market for a little over 10 years. Although tiny amounts have been found in Germany, California, and Sri Lanka, among other...