SPESSARTINE WITH HYALITE

ABOUT THE SPECIMEN

Choice small cabinet specimen of rich, crimson-red spessartine garnets with great presentation. The garnets are gemmy and super lustrous with stepped faces, highlighted by a 1.3 cm striated crystal in the center. What really sets this apart is a band of hyalite opal on the edge of the piece which pops a bright neon green when under shortwave UV light. This combination is seldom seen outside of Tongbei, and from there most examples are much less attractive. Even with all of the great spessartine to come out of the Wushan Mine, this one stands out as a particularly fine example. From the collection of Ken Roberts, the specimen comes with a label of his with an original price tag of $1,200.

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The spessartines marketed under the "Wushan Mine" locality originate from multiple small pits and quarries near Tongbei village rather than any single mine - a trade simplification noted by Ottens in his 2005 Mineralogical Record account. The host granites intruded during Late Cretaceous subduction of the Paleo-Pacific Plate beneath southeastern China, dated between 86–92 Ma; excess aluminum in the metaluminous magma concentrated into miarolitic pegmatite veins cutting the granite, crystallizing spessartine at roughly 505–532°C. Manganese drives the saturated orange color, and the dominant habit is a trapezohedron modified by dodecahedral faces - typically gemmy, resinous crystals to 15 mm perched on microcline with smoky quartz and occasional helvine or topaz. Material first reached Western markets with uncertain locality attribution in 1998 before Fujian was confirmed as the source in late 2001. The original Tongbei workings - specifically those operated by collector Chen Wei Gang - are now closed, though broadly similar material continues from nearby Yunling in Zhangpu County; the finest early-2000s pieces with complete, unworn crystals on undamaged microcline matrix are considered the benchmark and have not been equaled since.