OK Folks - we purchased this as being Green Garnet from Afghanistan; however, after a great friend (Anthony "Tony" Mariano) did a quick test on this it showed up as being a mix of Emerald and what he tentatively identified as a singly refractive Chrome Green colored stone. I had mentioned to him that it was sold to us as Green Garnet and hence it was easily concluded that it was Green Garnet. Now, Tony did an origin analysis on the Emeralds in the Parcel and they were identified as being Swat material. Wow....now we are really confused as to where this material is from.

From our run I would say that only 10% or so is Emerald as it is easily discernable from its crystal structure; however, the bulk of this lot is Chromium colored and singly refractive and we have tentatively identified it as Chrome Green Garnet. If this is such it would be an extraordinary find and worth stealing away at our price right away! I don't think you can go wrong with this at the price as even if this was Emerald, it is some of the darn cleanest Emerald I have EVER seen - it is definitely not Emerald for the most part though as it is mostly singly refractive. Now, it is interesting to point out that a stone or two in here seems to have the striations down certain terminations that point to it being Chrome Tourmaline but that is only for one stone that we were able to identify and it is a bit off in color from the rest of the parcel as being very slightly yellowish in color.

I have taken out a few stones from the parcel to keep on hand (all were roughly the same size and the same quality so I didn't pick out the cream or anything as it really wasn't possible). We would love to hear back from the buyer if possible on what the material is! I don't think you will ever see this material in the market via another source so grab it as we have priced this to sell quickly.

1. There has been a very limited amount of Garnet that has been produced in Afghanistan and it is rarely facet grade. This is the Second lot of this material that I have seen enter the market.

2. This has not yet been tested and as a result we can't certify the type of Garnet it is. We have taken a few sample stones of this material and are preparing to send them to GIA for a formal analysis in the near future.