New User Looking for Help and Direction

[ndls96]

Hello, folks! I just joined as a member, and I hope someone can offer me advice and guidance.

A couple of years ago my mother found this stone in her garden. She gave it to my son, who showed me and I thought it to be a nice example of cut glass or, maybe, some quartz. He kept bothering me to "check into what it really is," and I finally did that today, taking it to the local university and finding a couple of friendly geologists to look at it. Pretty quickly they decided it was a rather large, very nice piece of garnet. I asked what it was worth, and they said they had no idea. I asked if it had been cut (I thought it had), but they said no, that's the natural faceting of the stone (and they showed me a few pictures to prove the point -- I was rather taken aback).


That's why I'm here ... I'm trying to figure out where to take this thing to get an idea of value and what can be done with it (if anything).

I did weight it on our postal scale. It's about 1.2 oz, which according to the conversion website wolfram alpha comes out to be about 170 carats. (Wish it were a diamond!) The ruler in the picture is in inches. (I don't have one in metric scale.)

Any help will be much appreciated.

 

[cm366]

Hi ndls96,
Welcome to Pricescope, and congratulations on your lovely garnet! There are many varieties of garnet in colours ranging from blues and greens through yellow, orange, red and purple - it's a spectacular variety of gem and my personal favorite. The most commonly found varieties in North America are pyrope and almandine, which tend toward red and orange respectively. They're frequently tinged with brown, which can give them colour more like a brick than, say, a stop sign or fire truck. Your find looks like one of these, although it may be difficult to identify the variety more exactly without a lab to test the wavelengths of light it absorbs.

Reddish-brown garnets are relatively common in larger sizes and tend to show a great deal of black even when well cut (a phenomenon known as extinction). If the stone has very high clarity (you may be able to test by holding it up to a strong light or immersing it in a glass of water to look for cracks) you might consider getting it cut as a gem, but it's likely that its greatest value will be as a very nice mineral specimen and collection piece for your son.

While I wouldn't necessarily endorse any of the seller's pitch, these

http://www.etsy.com/listing/80092442/large-pyrope-garnet-rare-fire-eye-raw?ref=sr_gallery_1&ga_includes%5B0%5D=tags&ga_search_query=rough+pyrope+garnet&ga_search_type=all&ga_facet=rough+pyrope+garnet&ga_includes%5B%5D=tags&ga_view_type=gallery

are probably a fair comparison to your stone in terms of their market price. Hope it helps, and congratulations again on your mother's lucky find!

 

[PrecisionGem]

A stone like that is worth more uncut than cut. There are mineral collectors who will like the well formed crystal as a specimen.
Nice find !

 

[chrono]

Please do not cut the stone. It's not going to look that great (overly dark) once faceted. On the other hand, it is great as a specimen, showing its beautiful crystal structure. That is where the greater value lies.

 

[minousbijoux]

I can't believe your mom found that in her garden! Congrats! Good for your son for pushing you to find out more.