Untreated Color-Change Garnet 1.01 (BCCG101)

1.01 Carat
Color Changer
Medium Dark 75
Lightly Included

GRADING REPORT BCCG101

- Identification: Natural Unheated & Untreated Color-Change Garnet
- Carat: 1.01
- Shape: Oval
- Measures: 6.27x4.90x3.42 (millimeter)
- Color Grade: Good
- Color Change: Excellent ('dramatic' or extra strong)
- Tone: Medium Dark 75
- Color Zoning: None
- Clarity: Lightly Included
- Cutting Grade: Very Good
  > Brilliancy: 50%
  > Depth: 70%
- Origin: Tanzania
- Treatment: None

Certificate No: IGI 361902754

Overall Grade: Very Good

Comment: This is one of the garnets with a radical alexandrite-type color-change from blue-green at day to reddish purple at night. Though just over one carat it meets the other gems from this parcel with a 6x5mm face-up. No window thanks to a dark tone. Local hand-cut, good enough, even if not perfect. No eye-visible inclusions. See the close-ups below and under 'more images' with red sparkling from blue, green, purple; and the green needle in front of a purple-blue background. A landscape of thin colored bars. We find these needles in most of this particularly rare type of color-changer garnets. It was the same with the gems from Bekily, if they had any inclusions, and now here in these new gems from Tanzania, suggesting a similar geologically history (scientists may roll their eyes over the ignorant simplification - books have been written about the topic - here, we must remain humbly simple). As always, CC gems are the most difficult to show on photo, but I hope the images do help to envision what only the brain can process in person: red flashes in green, green sparks in red. BTW: The supply of these new CC spessartite-pyrope garnets from Tanzania has already ceased. We've bought all under two+ carats that fulfilled our '3*Nos of Excellence' and this 1.01 is the 2nd to last. Why the limit to size? Because the bigger they get, the darker (not to mention rarer and more expensive) they get, and only very bright light will extract the color-change. The exceptional four or six carat gems are probably better for a serious collection than for jewelry. The most remarkable example of color change we've seen, so far, was in these small 25 pointers. We've tried to fill the gap between a quarter carat and one carat but so far, no luck.