|
The Tucson Gem and Mineral show for a dealer
like myself is more than a show. It's a process. Most of the
shows kick off two weeks before the main convention center
show. Thus, in practical manner, I leave Rapid City, South
Dakota a week prior to the start of the hotel shows. This
allows a few days drive plus time to visit collectors along
the way and also to pound on doors of dealers setting up. Yes,
some dealers don't like this, and I don't blame them. Some
welcome this, depending on their situation. After the official
gates open, all hell breaks loose and people are everywhere.
At this point, I shift to a higher gear, drink more coffee,
put my blinders on (like my wife calls it) and go about
stashing away minerals in rooms all over town. After the first
week I sleep then count my money or lack thereof. The next
week, I gather up the minerals that I stashed, and then the
process begins all over again in a lower gear. At this point,
a lot of the rooms start looking the same so I visit the
"strip" west of I-10. There are mineral dealers
along the strip lurking in the shadows of the bead and
lapidary dealers.
This year was no exception. I arrived in Tucson a few days
ahead of time as usual and met with some dealers/collectors along the
way. Evan Jones in Phoenix invited me over to see his
lot of Azurite & Malachites from the new find in Milpillas,
Cananea district, Sonora, Mexico. These are quite
attractive and modestly priced (below). Evan was in on this
find from the start and probably has bulk of them. Once I arrived in Tucson, I
met with my favorite dealers
early in the process. I tackled a few hotels or whoever was open
for business. In the previous
years, this was a rather straight forward process. But the last
few years have been a little aggravating.
Since the meltdown at the Executive Inn, it seems as though
finding my favorite dealers is one big pain in the you know
what. The Zinn shows have been in a state of flux the last few
years. As a result, the main mineral hotels have been all over
town.
 |
Azurite -
Milpillas, Cananea district, Sonora, Mexico |
This year the city had ALL the main entrance and
exit ramps from Prince to 29th off the I-10 freeway closed! This huge project will continue until the
Spring of 2010. See http://i10tucsondistrict.com/29toP.html
for more information. Needless to say, it made getting around
difficult. With the Zinn shows at the Inn Suites and Quality
Inn, driving back and forth numerous times is not a good idea
with the I-10 construction. The city planners also took out
several parking lots around the convention center. You can put
on a lot of miles in the course of two weeks in Tucson. I
must have put on over 750 miles. This in addition to the 2600
mile roundtrip from Rapid City to Tucson.
If you go to Tucson for minerals, the Zinn
shows are not the only shows in town. Marty Zinn runs the main
mineral shows at the Inn Suites and Quality Inn (Benson
Hwy - between Park and Ajo). If you shop for Chinese minerals
go to the QI. Straight out of the gate everything is keystone at
the QI. That's a humorous marketing strategy since nothing is
priced to begin with in these rooms. You will also
find plenty of dealers from India and Russia at the QI.
My favorite Zeolite dealer from India is Dr. Hemant Merchant
with Mineral Decor. Dr. Merchant takes the time to
explain everything you want to know about zeolites. He had
some interesting things to say about the botryoidal Fluorites.
Watch out when you buy these, most are oiled and if they are
treated with oil, they will soon dry and become opaque and at
least loose color. A refreshing surprise this year were Ruby Corundum crystals from
Wyoming. Dr. Bohn Dunbar (Star Mountain Mining) located
this deposit in the Granite Mountains of Wyoming. The corundum
is a long ways from being gem quality, but the crystals are
fascinating and are red to blue. Probably the best exhibitors
at the QI for minerals are Gunnar Farber, Kristalle and Dave
Bunk. Gunnar had his usual array of species all meticulously
arranged in nice plastic boxes. Gunnar brought with him
several dozen Manganites from Ilfeld, Harz, Germany.
These Manganites are from a new find at the old locality and have
lustrous, highly reflective prismatic crystals to 2cm. The
show room at the QI were again occupied by Dave Bunk Minerals
and Kristalle. Everything was keystone as this material was
obviously an overload of stock by these two mineral kings. I
purchased of a flat from Bunk, mostly older specimens from the
antique Westenberger collection he had last year.
Kristalle had an entire room loaded with Tsumeb specimens. Oh,
I almost forgot. One distinguished Chinese dealer (sorry I did
not get the dealer name) had a presumably new find of
Tourmaline on a matrix of octahedral Fluorite.
|
|
Tourmaline on octahedral Fluorite
Yankuchain, China
What will they think of next?
|
I don't think the dealers had a great time at
the Inn Suites. The first week was cool and a bit
rainy. Second, it seems as though a band of Hippies took it
upon themselves to high-grade more than a few rooms. Several
dealers had collectively tens of thousands of dollars of
display quality minerals stolen. These weren't the kind of
Hippies I remember from the 70's. Those Hippies were Hip and
peaceful. These Hippies were phonies and thieves. Who knows
how they did it, but they were caught red-handed with the
loot. Word on the street was that Tucson police, warrant in
hand, entered the room at the Inn Suites where the
perpetrators concealed their goods. Upon entering the room one
of the villains jumped the cop and got the best of the him until
a Brazilian mineral dealer came to the rescue. One whop from the Brazilian took him out. The other hippie was
pursued by the big cop, who was always at the old Executive
Inn, and was quickly apprehended. This is
all hearsay and was not corroborated by official means, but
similiar stories were heard all about the Inn Suites. One of
the first days at the show I saw one guy jump onto a big bag
of Styrofoam peanuts from the second floor and took off
running. Was this a rehearsal of things to come? I don't know,
but his shifty eyed buddy watched nearby and appeared to take notes.
Nevertheless there was a spike in stolen minerals this year.
Even the Mineral Zone operated by Marcus Origliari, who opened
a shop north of the Inn Suites on Main Avenue, was broken into. Thousands of
dollars in Spessartines, Emeralds, Phosphopyllites and other
minerals were stolen. See Mindat thread at: http://www.mindat.org/mesg-56-88130.html
for more information.
At the Inn Suites, there are many mineral dealers
worthy of your business. My usual stops include Dr.
Jaroslav Hrysl's room. Jaroslav had some spectacular
Pearceites (see photos below) from a new find at the Uchucchacua
mine in Peru. I have already posted a few of these on my
February 12th update and there
will be more to come. This year Jaroslav shared some space
with Dr. Peter Kolesar. Peter had a lot of fine
rarities including Suredaite from Argentina. Disturbing
is the trend of field collecting dealers and systematic
dealers that are vanishing from the Inn Suites. Excalibur Minerals
and Pequa Minerals are no longer at the show. Gone are
the days when inexpensive but good field-collected minerals
are easy to come by from dealers like The Collector's Stope
or Lehmann Minerals not to mention plenty of others.
This is too bad since it does nothing to foster mineral
collecting for our young kids. Maybe it's the price of gas,
maybe it's show fees, maybe it's room rates. How about all of
the above? Someone needs to find a large parking lot and
keep it simple - pick-ups loaded with rock whereby the dealer
can load up and drive away each night. Enough ranting.
There
are still those mentioned above in addition to Alfredo
Petrov,
Petre Sztacho, George Stevens sticking it out. Other quality dealers include
Jordi Fabre, Carion, Ausrox, Fender, Great Basin (Scott
Kleine), North Star, Mineral Search (Doug Wallace), Seibel,
Raycyn, Wright's, Luiz Menezes, and Peter Megaw. Forgive me if
I missed a few. Collector's Edge is on the top of my
list as they always come up with old and interesting minerals.
These guys are go-getters combing the earth. They go after mining
contracts of old and new sites and are the source rather than
the middle man. Last year they had a load of Panasqueira
straight from the mine. This year they had a new find of Azurites
from Australia found by Dehne McLaughlin. Several dealers had a few new mineral finds or
at least fresh material from contemporary finds such as Luiz
Menezes with a fresh batch of beautiful green Fluorapatites
from Lavra do Sapo. See Jordi
Fabre's forum under Tucson Show 2008 for a review of these
Fluorapatites. Speaking of the
Fabre Minerals, Jordi had a few new finds himself including
spectacular iridescent Goethite from the Filón Sur Mine,
Andalusia, Spain.
|
Jordi Fabre's iridescent Goethite
-
Filón Sur Mine, Tharsis, Huelva, Andalusia, Spain |
 |
Somewhat hidden on the
backside of the IS are some of the better dealers that are
often overlooked. Bruce Wood Minerals always has
quality fielded collected minerals. Like Bruce, another very
friendly dealer is John Cornish. This year John's
entire room was filled with Bunker Hill Pyromorphite.
Another is Joe Dorris. Joe had some of the best Amazonite
Microcline-smoky Quartz combinations I have ever
seen. Both John Cornish and Joe Dorris have published
nice articles of there field collecting ventures in the new
magazine by "The-Vug.com" given out for free at the
show.
 |
John Cornish -
the Story of his mining venture and
his
Heavy Metal Rock Band.
Page 14 of The-Vug's new
magazine, free at the Tucson 2008 (see below). |
Back to
Collector's Edge, I obtained several flats from the Philadelphia
Academy of Sciences Collection. These are not your drop
dead specimens, but rather are interesting old mining
specimens of days past. All of the specimens are labeled with
old hand-inked fountain pen labels some with older yet labels
from famous mineralogists Lazard Cahn and Arthur Montgomery.
The lot is heavy in Chilean and North Carolina minerals.
|
Flats of Philadelphia Academy of
Sciences Collection offered by Collector's Edge |
A show overlooked by many is the EconoLodge at I-10 and 6th
Avenue. At this show is a small group of dealers most of
which are exiles from the Zinn shows. These include Mikon
and (Mike) Shannon Minerals. Mikon and Shannon had a load
of material freshly mined from Moctezuma, Sonora, Mexico.
Apparently there is some test trenching happening down there
and exposing all those tellurates. (yikes! I gotta go). I saw about 50 flats, which
were dealt away already to another dealer. Too bad, I saw
several flats I would have purchased. Mikon also had numerous
flats from the new dipyramidal Wulfenites from Mina Ojuela.
See the photos below. This is not quite the same quality of
older Ojuela but nonetheless is good material. All the flats
were again acquired by the same dealer as the Moctezuma
material. I managed to pick up a few specimens of nice twinned
Hessites from Moctezuma and some Benleonardites.
The extensive show room of Mikon's and Shannon proved to be
productive in other areas. Last year I acquired Christmas
mine minerals, and this year I was able to acquire some of
the best Junitoite specimens ever found at the
Christmas mine. Of course
there are some other quality dealers at the EconoLodge
including a Russian systematic dealer named Nikolai
Brandner.. From what I hear, the dealers at this show are
contemplating moving back to the Executive Inn.
Another nice secret in Tucson is the Oracle
Wholesale Show on North Oracle & Plata Street, which
is a few blocks north of the Executive Inn. Here you will find
a group of wholesalers including Collector's Edge, Lehigh
Minerals, and Clive Queit, not to mention Top Gem
and others. My main target was Collector's Edge, but the swarm
of high-graders at Clive's unit was just too irresistible for
me. So, like a crazed rockhound from South Dakota, I power
slid into the a spot and jumped out to see what was going on.
What I found were those neat epimorphs of Siderite after
Calcites. You may have seen these already as they actually
surfaced last year(?). Anyhow, I picked up the best ones - all
thumbnails and miniatures (the big ones must have been gobled
up by the pseudo-gods). Several made it on my February 12th
update and went fast. There are a few left on the update, and
I have a few left to post.
|
Siderite epimorph after Calcite -
Aggeneys, Northern Cape
Province, South Africa |
 |
After this little distraction, I wondered over
to Collector's Edge unit. There, I found some superb, very
attractive specimens from Yaogangxian mine, Hunan, China.
I picked up a small lot of combination specimens of Fluorite,
Arsenopyrite, Stannite Chalcopyrite, Ferberite, and Wurtzite
etc. You know what's funny? I don't think I saw anything close
to the caliber of these specimens in the Chinese rooms all
over Tucson. I'm not so sure if I even saw any in fact other
than in Collector's Edge stock. You might just be seeing the
last of these.......but then again - look at this load pulling
into Tucson!!!!!
|
