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almandine garnet - common but not tawdry
Almandine is the most common form of garnet and therefore, the least expensive garnet.
Garnet's atoms are tightly packed, making them relatively hard and dense.
Rare star garnets, found only in India and Idaho, are almandines that exhibit asterism, just like star sapphires.
Three widely separated states pride themselves on their almandine deposits: Connecticut, Idaho and Alaska.
 garnet gold
An iron aluminum silicate with a characteristic deep red to slightly purple or violet color, almandine garnet often has a layer of golden mica that gives it a particular sheen. Almandine is usually found in garnet mica schists, a type of metamorphic rock composed mostly of mica; less frequently it is found in granitic pegmatites.

star almandine garnet, idaho

Fine-quality almandine and almandine-pyrope garnet is mined around the world, most notably in Russia's Sverdlovskaya Oblast in the Ural Mountains, an area that has produced almandines for hundreds, if not thousands, of years; the Czech Republic (Bohemia), another historical source; India, Germany, and the US.
Of the US deposits, Idaho's "Queensland Garnet" is known not only for its color and brilliance, but also for its large size and purity; it's also known for its "star garnet" which is the State Gem. Connecticut, who considers itself one of the finest sources in the world of the almandine garnet, made it the State Mineral in 1977.
Wrangell, Alaska, is another US source: stop at any port along Alaska's Inland Passage and chances are you'll be met by enterprising children selling fist-sized chunks of rock (granitic pegmatite?) with visible rough garnets for $3-$7 a rock.

symbolic attributes

geographic
state gem Idaho (star almandine garnet)
state mineral Connecticut
metaphysical
planetary stone Sun