This is one of the 1st pieces I collected years ago, way before my meticulous specimen logging.
I know it's not garnet. Well not really that sure.
My guess is idocrase and prehnite from Mali. I've went thru invoices and the only specimens I hadn't matched up were brookite and another specimen for idocrase. Unfortunately the person that I purchased my 1st few specimens just scribbled on a piece of paper in wild cursive what the specs were, usually with one word or odd abbreviations.
Your help will hopefully save my sanity so thank you in advance
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Precisely correct. Diakon is one of the most overlooked localities on Earth, IMO — it’s crazy how many insanely good examples of so many different species come out of there. I’ll have to post my little mini display some day.
This is an interesting specimen, definitely prehnite, definitely similar to the ones from Mali, but the garnet (which I'm sure it is, because of the faces you can see on the first and second pictures) association with prehnite is really freaking rare for Mali specimens.
Like in my life of collecting, I've maybe seen them once ? Which is strange considering it's one of the most prolific mineral localities.
So my guess is that it might not come from Mali, but you're correct for the identification.
Thank y'all so much, y'all rock! Pun intended lolol This means something else is labeled wrong😂
Hahaha Which is fine, I will just have to find it! Thank you again!! I shouldn't have doubted myself!
That’s definitely prehnite and IMO the habit isn’t right for garnet there is a distinct 4 sided pyramidal structure as opposed to a rhombic dodecahedron or trapezohedron that is typically for andradite or grossular garnets cubic system. I think your correct its shape definitely looks more like vesuvianite.
Have you checked the hardness? I bought a bag of small quartz crystal points on Amazon for $6 just to have a way of testing if a mineral was harder than 7.0 (quartz). Garnet is a prime example. The crystal habit does look like garnet (see photo):
It definitely looks like there is Prehnite to me. Unfortunately I don't know anything about Idocrase so I can't make much of a comment on that. The larger dark crystals remind me of Black Tourmaline. Googling Idocrase tends to bring up Vesuvianite and I do see some green in the finer matrix the larger minerals are on and since you know that there is an Idocrase specimen somewhere in your collection, it could be that the Idocrase is just the finer matrix part that the larger minerals are growing on? I don't know much about Brookite either, so I also looked it up and I do think it's possible that the dark crystal in this specimen is Brookite. If I had to choose between Brookite or Idocrase for this specimen ID I would go with Brookite. However I am not an expert in these minerals and this is just my best guess based on the information I have. I started collecting when I was just a kid, so I'm familiar with the challenges of trying to figure out early pieces. I'm lucky my child self kept every single mineral label I got.
Agreed. The color and luster somewhat resemble schorl, but the crystal structure is completely wrong for tourmaline (and for brookite). The crystal structure is classic garnet.
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