The name Tsavorite or Tsavolite itself was derived from the place in which it was discovered, Tsavo National Park game park in 1971. Tsavorite is one of the most sought after gemstones in the market today for a few reasons. First and foremost its value and beauty comes from its rich green color ranging anywhere from a light spring green, an intense bluish-green and a deep forest green. Tsavorite is one of the only gemstones available anywhere that doesn’t have any treatments or enhancements whatsoever making it a very safe gemstone to purchase for investment or jewelry setting. Like all garnets, tsavorite shows great brilliance and fire from its high refractive index making it a prize stone for any jewelry setting. It is also interesting to know that tsavorite has double the dispertion of emeralds, giving tsavorite potentially greater brilliance. The hardness of a tsavorite makes it a durable and hard wearing gemstone with a hardness of 7.5 on Moh’s scale of hardness. Like all garnets, tsavorite is the birthstone for the months of January. Garnet is said to symbolize happiness as well as deep and enduring love and friendships.

Tsavorite comes from the East African bush: all the mines currently producing are in an arid grassy area with bare dry hills that runs across the border from Kenya to Tanzania. This area is home to snakes and an occasional lion. Hundreds of millions of years ago, this land was covered by the ocean. Layers of organic sediment were deposited, eventually forming shale. Then the land was subjected to intense heat and pressure, folding and uplifting, metamorphically changing the ocean floor into new minerals. This twisting and torturing of the rocks gave birth to the unusual gemstones of East Africa, many colored by the vanadium which is plentiful in these rocks because of their organic history in the ocean floor.

The geology which produces tsavorite is graphitic gneiss, rich in calcium from seams of marble which lace through them. Tsavorite is often found in pods with a coating of quartz or scapolite , which miners call "Potatoes". The wonderful rich green color is due to vanadium from the host rock, but some tsavorite is also colored by chromium. It is very rare to find tsavorite larger than 5 carat size because the heat and pressure which forms tsavorite millions of years ago shattered most of the crystals. 85% of the stones mined are smaller than 1 carat, only 10% are larger than 1carat, 2.5% larger than 2 carat and only 1% larger than 3 carat sizes.

Tsavorite is extremely prized in all carat sizes and considered rare over 1 carat sizes fetching anywhere from $200 - $700 USD per carat. Being that raw crystals are rarely found in over 5 carat sizes, any tsavorite over 2 carats is quite rare and valuable fetching anywhere from $500 - $2,000 USD per carat. A tsavorite with good color over 5 carats is extremely rare and valuable fetching anywhere from $1,000 - $3,000 USD per carat at today’s market.