Today’s topic starts with the letter ”P”.
Peridot is a yellowy green to olive or bottle green stone. It is the gemstone variant of olivine and its distinctive color is due to the presence of iron in the stone. It is one of the few gemstones that only come in one color.
High-grade, highly polished and faceted stones can be expensive but are great to work with because of the light reflecting the green color. It can be a clear or opaque stone.
It has been a prized gemstone since ancient Egypt and was gotten from an island in the Red Sea known as ‘Serpent Island’. It can be found be in Brazil, Burma, Egypt, Ireland, Russia, Sri Lanka and the US state of Arizona.
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| Peridot found in Arizona |
It can also be found sometimes in meteorites. A famous Pallasite meteorite was offered for auction in April 2008 with a requested price of close to $3 million at Bonhams, but did not sell. The largest cut peridot olivine is a 310 carat (62 g) specimen in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.
