Gem Profile 6:    Mandarin Garnet
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Great Balls of Fire:   
    It is early 1992 in Namibia's capital city of Windhoek (vindt-hook) and an influential German gem dealer has just been tipped off to a major find of superb orange spessartine garnet in the north near the border of Angola.  This may not be earth-shaking news to most dealers, but to German ones who spend much of their life scouting for hot new gem prospects, the tidbit is seismic in significance.  After all, we're not talking rust-red here, but a fireball-orange that is, as they say, to die for!  This gem material has come to be known as MANDARIN GARNET!

    Mandarin Garnet has grown in popularity, but not without some major competition.  Fire opal, found in Mexico, has been used as a less expensive substitute to Mandarin Garnet.  In sizes up to 10 carats, Mandarin Garnet can cost between $200 and $1,500 per carat, while similar sized fire opal can cost between $40 to $150. 

    But to compare the gemstones on cost alone would be an injustice to the superior characteristics of Mandarin Garnet.  The most obvious difference is the color.  At its best, fire opal possess a color resembling Sunkist orange.  Mandarin Garnet has a brilliant display of light, liking its color to "great balls of fire".  Mandarin garnet is also much more scarce than fire opal.  Mandarin Garnet also contains a much greater hardness (7.5 for garnet versus 5.5-6.0 for opal), better durability (garnet is tough and opal is brittle), and higher brilliance (Mandarin Garnet's refractive index is 1.79 to 1.81 versus 1.44 to 1.46 for opal. 

    Indeed, the only drawbacks to Mandarin Garnet are the sometimes milky inclusions and black manganese oxide specks that, when plentiful, can inhibit the brilliance and color of the stones.  Otherwise, the gems have a lustrous, uniform color that makes them standouts. 

    Although stones up to 55 carats have been cut, sizes tend to be between 1/2 and 5 carats.  Because the main sources of cut Mandarin Garnet have been Israel and Germany, jewelers can expect individual stones to be well cut and suites to be well matched in terms of color and clarity.  The fact that Mandarin Garnet boasts uniform color should prove one of the most enduring of its many assets. 

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