1.55ct Garnet? Pretty sure its not a ruby

[Blake Moore]

This was rolling around my gold pan today, got it from a box of paydirt gravel from Prospector John up in Alaska. If you're not familiar with him, he sells material online for those of us that don't live 500 miles of gold producing regions of the country, in my case south florida.

It weighed out to 1.55ct and has some serious cracks and inclusions throughout, definately not anything to be considered flawless, but a very deep ruby red, I think its dodecohedron, I kinda lost count of sides after 8, and most facets seem to be pentagonal, a few are hexagonal, but I can't be sure its not damage from rolling through an alaska stream for 100 years

any help is appreciated, I am NOT a gemologist, nor do I claim to have a clue as to what I'm doing, have only started getting into minerals over the last 6 months and am learning and having more fun than I would have imagined

 

[g-olden years]

I like your style of prospecting! As to the stone, please add a picture of it placed on a white background. As is, even when I enlarged your current pic a lot, nearly impossible to view the stone. Once you've got better pic of it, some of the gemstone folks here will probably weigh in with their opinions. Also, you could email "Prospector John" to ask whether both ruby and garnet are found in his location, or just one of those stones. HAVE FUN! And keep us posted. Andi

 

[niffler]

Garnets are usually 12 or 24 sided crystals, ruby is corrundum, which has 6. But, I'm no expert.

 

[Msbeepbeep]

That's one way to TH in winter inside! Nice!

 

[Broken knee]

Never mind the rock, was there any gold in the bag?HH
BK

 

[lab rat]

Garnets are pretty common, there is a well known source of very large crystals in the Aleutian islands. As was mentioned, a white background and photographed in sunlight would probably help ID it.