2/3/08 12:15 a.m.
Hi Everyone,
I've still some more work to do, but I wanted to send another update from here at the show!
First off, I saw our friend from Argentina, Ricardo, last night as I was hurrying off and just took a second to say hello. I can't wait to visit him and Claudia to see their terrific agates!
The big news is that I can show you all my room here at the show, see...
www.mineralshows.com/tucson2008
This is a neat little report! From it can additionally be seen a specimen of Darwin, California wulfenite (bringing back memories of my last adventure there...)
mcrocks.com/ftr07/CornishAugust2007.html
... and the incredible azurite I mentioned earlier being shown by Evan Jones. I love the magic of the web and our ability to pass on information so quickly!
We've had lots of nice folks come through the door and it's been an honest to goodness steady smile. Rocks, rocks, rocks, like there's not another worry in the world. And while I've not been out much, and usually during a time when most other folks have closed, I have spotted a few really neat things. As an example: I was cruising back from breakfast when I spotted some beautifully colored spodumenes variety kunzite from Brazil. They were big, the largest and best about a foot long (!) and an incredibly intense pinkish-magenta color that was absolutely stunning. Also within this same dealer's room, I inquired as to the electric blue crystals lining the shelf of one display. They were gorgeous things which seemed to shimmer with multi-colored internal flashes. Their identity, apatite, again from Brazil. This gentleman then referred me to a luminous deep blue suite of stones in another case, faceted examples from the same occurrence, all were absolutely luscious! Pretty, pretty, pretty!
From here I next visited a room featuring Chinese minerals and found my kind of rock right in the doorway! It was a monstrous roundish shaped slab about 18 inches across and 10 inches high completely covered in a wonderfully soft, kind of sky blue colored flos ferri aragonite. It looked like some kind of surreal nest of interwoven crystalline threads. Pretty!
Needing to get back (!), I passed several rooms featuring meteorites, minerals from Russia, from Mexico, fern (Pennsylvania) and sting ray (Wyoming) fossils, killer bright gemmy green and purple vesuvianites from Canada, geodes from Uruguay, fluorescent minerals, golds from Australia (incidentally, I saw and held a friends 6 inch long spinel twinned gold from Australia, what a brute! Over 6 grams of the richest, buttery colored gold you've ever seen... incredible!) and you should have seen his Australian copper! And, I haven't even started to visit the tiniest percentage of the rooms that are here in this show alone!
Also seen was another batch of the exquisite soft red pink colored rhodonites from Peru, some with beautifully complimenting white dew drop calcites. I saw some monster, up to 2 foot long slabs with magnetites from a new locality in Australia from one of that country's dealers, white slabs with sharp black octahedrons up to two inches richly sprinkled across the matrix. Not much from the one Indian dealer I visited, which compared to last year's bounty crop of fantastic treasures, was a big let down.
Probably the best room I've visited, though a mighty expensive room, is that of Collectors Edge (www.collectorsedge.com). Man, talk about a stunning room of killer rocks, they had it in spades! For Mike, they had a large grouping of Philadelphia Academy of Sciences specimens featuring minerals from North Carolina. Pyromorphites and a large array of other rare and historic beauties. Additionally, they had some stellar fluorites from China including one spectacular multi-generational green and purple specimen about the size of a large dinner plate which I found particularly striking. Other fantastics included, coppers from the U.P. of Michigan and more.
There is still so much here to see, and this is just one show. There are dozens going on all over town. Gems, jewelry, fossils, the treasures all come this a' way to Tucson!
The weather has been really nice here these last few days, t-shirt nice. Super Bowl Sunday threatens to wash everyone indoors to watch the game this afternoon, we'll just have to see how the day goes. If you're watching the game, I hope your team wins and the rest of you, start planning now, if not for this year's show (there's still time!), next year's Tucson is right around the corner!
I'm looking forward to seeing Doug Merson when he arrives and will pass on a big hello from all of you (if you're there Doug, we'll see you soon!)! All the very best everyone, take care!
2/4/08 12:49 p.m.
Good Day!,
It's a windy, cloudy, rainy, thunder-storming morning here in Tucson today with just a touch of blue filtering through. Yesterday with the Super Bowl, things were busy early on and then only the diehards came out and things slowed down some. While dedicated to the room for the majority of the time, I did manage to rip away and saw a few more rooms (I tried to get out after dinner too, but most folks were pretty much shut down) and snapped off a couple more photos.
I wandered into the Fossil Hall and enjoyed gawking at the treasures there. A monstrous 16 foot fully articulated fossil turtle from South Dakota, wickedly beautiful ammonites from the Bearpaw Formation in Canada (a weakness of mine). Trilobites and reconstructed full size dinosaur casts and among them all, I was pleasantly surprised to find Marie Huizing, Managing Editor of Rocks & Minerals magazine (www.rocksandminerals.org). We, in the lull, had several very pleasant minutes to talk and it was quite nice. Imagine the quiet in the eye of the storm. Before saying my goodbyes, I picked up a copy of the Australian Journal of Mineralogy (www.mineral.org.au), the special Dundas, Tasmania Issue.
From there, I slowly angled back towards the room making a few stops here and there. I checked out Moroccan geodes and fossil teeth, Lebanese fossil fish, Australian opals (stunning), wire wrapping and crystalline golds from California, Tsumeb copper minerals and Kazakhstan coppers and on and on, one room following seamlessly into another.
Later that night while wandering again, I visited the fluorescent mineral's room a couple of doors down and thrilled to that special glow that these unique specimens produce. Also seen was the fantastically huge 8 + carat faceted benitoite that had been featured a short while ago in Rock & Gem magazine (www.rockngem.com). Now in Scott Kleine's, Great Basin Minerals room, it had come in the night before and Scott had slaved late into the evening to get his display up for the morning's opening. It is an impressive display with approximately one hundred faceted stones accompanied by a decent sized lot of benitoite specimens too. How cool to see this monstrous stone featured in the magazine one day and then see it here the next!
While closed, many rooms offer lighted window displays which glow enticingly into the evening. Some are fancy units artfully crafted while others, heck, some folks just leave their curtains open and their lights on... and it was in one of these rooms that I observed an utterly drop dead stellar display of massive superbly polished boulderish- freeforms up to a bit over a foot tall and wide, one after the other, and all displaying beautiful solid faces of chrysocolla in the most gorgeous, softest, prettiest shades of blue accented by the equally rich colored green of malachite and the darker blue of azurite. Man, oh man, these were pretty!! I can just imagine a corner of the room and a nice open display dominated by these stunning specimens. Impressive!
Tucson, I love it!
Also yesterday, I finally had the chance to meet up with Ricardo and Claudia in their room. They had a fantastic display, as I'm sure you can imagine, and it was a real pleasure to talk with them and catch-up on their adventures since last year's show. They are such nice people, a real pleasure.
More later.
All the very best!
2/5/08 10:03 p.m.
Hi All,
I'm a bit slow this morning, having had a rough night with a Pizza Hut pizza... ugh!
It's a bright blue sky morning. The mountains were brushed with a light coating of snow last night and the truck's windows were covered in ice. With the door open, it's chilly in the room. Still, I've got the case lights lit and the heater on and it's going to be a great day.
I didn't get out much yesterday and so really don't have much to report. Thank goodness for friends, old and new, coming to visit! As an example: a real charmer is little Bernardo from Uruguay. I'd bet Bernardo is about 12 or 13 and is one neat kid. He dropped into the room a couple of days ago looking for something special for his Grandma. We talked and laughed and I found that Bernardo and his family are selling spectacular amethyst geodes in a grassy area at the front of the hotel (their best, a massive egg-like thing about 5 feet around with gemmy beautiful calcites has already been sold to the Houston Museum of Texas) and incredibly stunning calcite/amethyst combination specimens from a separate second floor room!
That's it for now, I'm going to try and wake up and feel more human, maybe even close the door for a bit. One things for sure, no more pizza for awhile!
All the very best everyone, take care!
