Garnet Gemstones

<b>Garnet Gemstones - The Most Beautiful Gemstone Family</b><br>
The wonderful thing about garnets is that they are in most cases, one of the most affordable gemstones in the world. The red varieties are plentiful and inexpensive. The more rare colors while not as plentiful are still in many cases more affordable on a per carat price basis than other colored gemstones.

<b>Garnets Come in A Huge Variety of Colors</b><br>
What many people don't realize is the range of colors in which garnet comes. There is the rich deep red that most people are familiar with; then there is the green of the tsavorite garnet (which is being used as an accent gemstone more and more frequently because they make an excellent choice as an emerald substitute) or there are yellow, orange, pink, purple and clear (white) colors of garnet. There are even color shift and change garnets.  The color change greenish-blue to violet-red have the color of the much more expensive alexandrite.

<b>A Family of Beautiful Gemstones In Colors That Will Tickle Everyone's Fancy  </b><br>Garnet is actually a family (group) of minerals. They are a family of complex silicate minerals in which each branch of the family is a slightly different combination of chemical elements but they all have the same cubic crystal form / structure. Think of a family of cousins. The garnets used in jewelry are almandine, andradite, grossular, pyrope and uvarovite.  Some may find it interesting that when some garnets were formed in the earth, there was a "melding" or intermingling of elements and one can find garnets that are a mixture of two or three garnet types. A soupçon of this element or a dash more of another element can create an entirely different color garnet.

<b>Loose Garnet Gems Are Often Sold By Trade Names</b><br>
To further confuse things, some garnets are not sold by jewelers by their scientific names but they are sold under their trade names. For example, when one just says "garnet" one is usually talking about either red garnet. Red garnet is typically either pyrope or almandine garnet but Mozambique red garnet is a combination of almandine AND pyrope garnet as is rhodolite garnet.