Post Tucson Show Report03 Mar 2007 By Robin
The buzz of the Tucson show seems already to be a distant memory. Three solid weeks of exhibiting, packing and unpacking specimens, traversing miles of hotel suites hunting for new purchases, socialising with dealers and collectors from around the world. Lots of hard work, but a lot of fun too!
The show started off chilly with snow-coated cacti greeting some on arrival. Luckily the weather warmed up to blue sky and sunshine for the last two weeks, much more pleasant especially for those in the tents lining the carparks!
Tucson is a very sprawled city, laid out flat and grid like, surrounded by mountains including the Santa Catalina Mountains. The streets are about 4 car widths wide, and the houses mostly 1 storey giving a real sense of openness, and the sky feels higher, especially for those that spend most of their time in England. The other main feature that jumps out is how dry it is, gardens and verges are red and dusty with almost no green grass to be seen.
Shows were spread across the city in more than 40 locations including hotels, marquees, warehouses and the Convention Centre. Trying to visit every show is a near impossible task, and sometimes it can take an hour to cross town from one hotel to the next with Tucson traffic (there are alot of traffic lights!!!)
Show attendance was said to be up this year, with more than 50 000 people estimated arriving in Tucson in search of minerals, fossils, gems, jewellery, meteorites and just about anything else you can think of associated with the industry. Many commented there was an increase in visitors from overseas this year - it is great to think this has become THE show for anyone interested in minerals.
I didn't manage to visit many of the shows this year, but hopefully this report will give you a good feel for the shows held at the InnSuites Hotel, the Westward Look and the main show at the Convention Center.
The Arizona Mineral & Fossil Show exhibits in 4 location including the InnSuites Hotel where we had two rooms. Due to rearrangement of several of the venues this year, most of the major dealers were located at the InnSuites. There were lots of familiar faces and some great minerals for sale.
Many dealers strip their room of the beds and set up display cases, which is what we did - the Crystal Classics room is pictured below.
 This Schorl Tourmaline included Aquamarine crystal was one of a few
in Scott of Majestic Mineral's room that caught collegue Luke’s eye. Jordi Fabre had a great selection of minerals including these Descloizite stalactites with Calcite from Portugal, a recent find of only one pocket with unusual stalactitic form. Big crystals of Descloizite are known from this location but normally form as crystals on a Limonitic matrix.
He also had a range of Doyleite and Gibbsite from Baoshan, Yunnan, China. Doyleite and Gibbsite are polymorphs and grow together, and generally can't be distinguished visually.
 This particularly nice smoky Quartz from the Dreamtime Claim, Teller Co. Colorado USA, was found in the Sunnywood Collection, also well know for their custom made bases.  One of the latest trends in home decorating - a giant fossilised palm leaf, selling for more than $50,000!
The Westward Look Show once again provided some extremely fine minerals, with prices to match.
Alain Martaud of France relaxes in his room, he had several very nice specimens on display.
A great Aqua with Garnets from Pakistan:
New Topaz from China:
Miner's Lunchbox had one of the new finds of the show - these new crystallised Golds from Round Mountain Mine, Nevada, USA.
They also had this cute Pyrite on Fluorite from China that took my fancy.
Rob Sielecki of Ausrox had a fine selection of Australian minerals including these Crocoites and Opals.
This Dragon knew where it was at, as he in chilled in Rob's room.
The world’s most difficult Emerald to photograph (took 3 of us with 3 different cameras to get it in focus!) found in Stuart Wilensky’s room.
A very nice Wulfenite from Glove Mine, Arizona, USA
Me with the lovely Eva, this show helping out Stuart Wilensky and Irv Brown, we were caught on camera by Aussie collector George Stacey.
Kevin Ward had one of the most fascinating displays at the show of sunken treasure, with several bars of Silver recovered from the wreck of the Atocha. The Spanish Galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha sank during a severe hurricane in September 1622, on the coral reefs near the Marquesas, about twenty miles west of the Florida Keys. It was laden with treasure of Silver, Gold and gems including Emeralds, which have slowly been recovered over the last 20 years. These Silver bars tell their own history by the inscriptions on their surface. Each owner inscribed their initials and as the bar changed hands, the previous owners intials were crossed out, so the history of ownership can be traced. The bars are now worth at least $40,000.
 One of the highlights of the show for us was the party thrown by Wayne and Dona Leicht (Kristalle) and Ian at their beautiful rental house in Tucson. It was a great night with fantastic food prepared by Michelen starred French chef Gerard Lesage (also a mineral collector, visiting Tucson for the first time).  The guys from British Natural History Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum.  Legendary mineral photographer Jeff Scovil with daughter and assistant Leila.  John Veevaert of Trinity Minerals and Rod Tyson of Tyson's Fine Minerals.  Brandy and Justin of The Vug and Zzyzx Minerals.  Ian, Wayne and Dona toast with Gerard the chef  My favourite, the dessert table, complete with chocolate fountain!
Dona, the Queen of displays, works her magic on one of the display cases
Ian and Luke snapped in action
This year’s theme was Australia: Minerals from Down Under. There were lots of great displays of some top notch Aussie minerals from private collections, dealers and museums from around the world.
Ian and Wayne and Dona put on a fine display of some of their best Australian Golds.
 
This crystallised gold from Joe's Gully, Tooloom, NSW is one of the
finest known. This specimen is ex. Doreen Chapman's Collection (The
late Albert Chapman's wife, Sydney Australia).  This fine leaf Gold specimen from the Mt McClure Mine in Western Australia has a great history. It was originally part of a larger piece and was saved from the mill at the mine by accident. Its Gold content was so high the metal detectors on the conveyor belts rejected it as 'tramp' metal, assuming it was a broken part of drilling equiment that had accidently got mixed into the ore. A mine worker then found it in the 'rubbish' pile. The boulder was wrenched open to create this specimen, no acid has been used to touch it up.  It was great to see the Geological Survey of Western Australia (my home state) was represented at the show. There was also a great range of Western Australian rocks and minerals on display including this fantastic Orbicular Granite   A very nice slice of Banded Iron Formation with Tiger's Eye from Mt Brockman in the Hamersley Basin in central Western Australia. David Vaughan was kind enough to be my scale. He was at the show representing the Western Australian Museum and had several displays set up for the Museum, and from his own collection. These included Minerals of Whim Creek; Zircons from the Hartz Range, NT; Meteorites; as well as this new find of Variscite in WA:   Alan and Mike of the Natural History Museum in London did a superb job with their display of Classic Australian Minerals.  This fine Copper and Stolzite with Raspite were the centre piece of their exhibit.  Rob Sielecki had an excellent collection of Australian minerals on display. Broken Hill mineral specimen were of course a big feature of the Australian exhibits.  George Stacey had one of the finest Broken Hill collections on display.  These super Rhodonites were some of the most drooled over item at the show.  The Smithsonian also had a great display of Broken Hill Specimens. Check out this Copper:  From the McLachlan Private Collection there was a display of Golds, Minerals and Gemstones including this sample of their unique Sapphire collection from Kings Plain, Northern NSW, featuring rarer coloured stones.  There were a range of other displays that were not based on Australia such as this selection of Bisbee, Arizona minerals from the Bisbee Museum.  I really liked this educational display entitled 'Odd Couples' which paired specimens of the same mineral species, but show the extreme range in colours and forms that they can have due to slight differences in composition by chemical impurites, and growth environment.   Two examples of Smithsonite odd couples - the top two from Choix, Mexico, the bottom two from Tsumeb, Namibia.  This mammoth Tourmaline on Quartz with Albite from Pederneira Mine,
Minas Gerais, Brazil from Fine Minerals International was another one
of the show stoppers, taking up an entire display case on its own, and
must measure about 50cm in height. However it was not nearly as heart
stopping as watching them try to repack it after the show for transport! This super Emerald specimen was on display in the stand of Brice and Christophe Gobin and definitely drew a few comments. The big crystal measured 8.5cm in height and the colour was stunning.  It wasn't all hard work at the show, there was lots of fun to be had -  Gloria and Gunther of Lithographie arrived one morning to find their booth had turned into a crime scene, complete with dead victim - the Tucson Police who patrol the convention centre at night had the chain of events all worked out....... and there was fun and frivolity at our booth with English High Tea - complete with hats, tea cups and of course homemade scones with jam and cream.   The guys get in on the action, looking good! Tucson 2007 was a great show once again, and many thanks to the
hard work put in by all of our (Kristalle and Crystal Classics) Team.
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