PSer, suggestions welcome!

[rosetta]

hello my fellow CS nuts

i am looking to buy some stones missing from my collection:

1. mint garnet

2. spessartite

3. peridot

4. emerald

5. sphene

Not looking for huge stones, but would appreciate any suggestions for the above you may have come across lately.

Thanks in advance!

 

[T L]

hello my fellow CS nuts

i am looking to buy some stones missing from my collection:

1. mint garnet

2. spessartite

3. peridot

4. emerald

5. sphene

Not looking for huge stones, but would appreciate any suggestions for the above you may have come across lately.

Thanks in advance!

1) It took me a LONG time to find a nice mint garnet that didn't look like the color of Frankenstein (dull super light toned, desaturated greyish green), or one that had too much yellow in it, which I don't consider mint. To find a saturated mint garnet with obvious blue in it, is really difficult, even in a small stone. You might have better luck finding a light yellowish green, but many gem aficionados don't consider light yellowish green to be mint even though many in the trade market them that way for an easy sell. Ebay seller Welborn has some light yellowish green ones that she calls mint. Gemfix.com also has some yellowish green ones as well. There are also some light yellowish green ones on Multicolour.com under his tsavorite category. Look for light toned stones. The saturated bluish green ones can be very very pricey, and again, I have yet to see any out there with a lot of blue in them, even on Pala.

2) It depends on how saturated and pure orange you want it. You can get tons of brown spessartites, or very yellowish ones, on ebay. If you want a more pure orange, it's going to be a bit more difficult and pricey to find, even among the lapidaries here. I have seen some decent ones on ajsgems.com though, but they're more expensive. I think ajsgems.com has very fair prices though.

3) Yellowish green, or minty green? The former can be found just about anywhere, even ebay, for very little money. Darker toned, more saturated greens are more money, but still attainable. Gene and Barry often carry nice peridots for reasonable prices.

4) Well, depending on the quality, I think MTG just returned one to Welborn that was a nice minty color. Gemlineinc.com carries affordable ones in decent quality. If you want a fine one, I would check with Josh at Serenitygems for some of his Columbians, and if it's over $1K in price, I would want a lab report with treatment noted.

5) Sphene can be found on ebay for good prices. Ebay dealers Exportgems and Tan (Odysseygem and Gemburionline) carry them. Larger more saturated green stones are more money, but I did see a really nice sphene from Tan for a great price, so check out his listings. I don't know if it's still there. I and some other people have sphenes from Exportgems, and they're nice stones for what we paid. The brownish yellow ones tend to be very dispersive, but I'm not sure which background color you want.

It might be more helpful for us to find you what you wanted if you gave a budget for each gem, and what you're expecting colorwise from each of them.

Hope that helps.

 

[chrono]

Knowing your general budget and expectation of colour will help immensely. Like everything else, there are good ones and bad ones out there, with lots in between. If you want fine specimen, even if small in size, can still end up being a long search.