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JANUARY 2009 FEATURED MINERAL
Upcoming Minerals
Dec 2008 Offer Sheet--Ext.pdf
Past Minerals
Club Member Renewal
Non-U.S. Memberships
Platinum Membership
2009 Show Schedule
Display Supplies.pdf
Rock & Gem Article
March 2006 Pyrite Writeup.pdf
Jet Beads
Past Specials Etc.
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We left for Tucson on Wednesday, January 30th,
and spent the night with friends in Hemet, CA, west of Palm Springs. Thursday
noon found us at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Blythe, CA, La Amapola.
 An hour later we were in Quartzsite, Arizona,
visiting with our Australian connection as he packed up to go to Tucson. It was
very cold and very windy there, which no doubt explained why there were
virtually no shoppers at the Desert Gardens Show that day. He explained that
foot traffic was way down (perhaps due to a lot of rainy and cold weather during
January) but that sales were good.
 We arrived in Tucson that night, set up our apartment and tried to get a good
night's sleep, difficult to do when thinking all night about gems and minerals!
Friday was to be our big day for shopping, and we made the most of it, as Club
members who see us at upcoming shows will soon find out. As we laughingly told
folks who visited our wholesale booth in Tucson, the only thing harder than
selling all day in Tucson is buying all day in Tucson! Trying to figure out what
is a good deal, whether it will sell fast, should we get a little or a lot,
might we see better quality later, etc., etc., etc., is always mentally taxing.
But we picked out a lot of wonderful new material to offer you, which we will do
after we get it all sorted out, labeled, and priced, hopefully with our March
write-up. Cheryl was also picking out some exceptional stones for her wire
jewelry.
We visited our Mexican connection, who did not bring us the selection of the
wonderful "raspberry" grossular garnets from Mexico as he had
promised. He said he would have them for us soon, so we'll have to wait to
feature them. We visited and bought from dealers from Australia, Madagascar,
Canada, India, Brazil, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, China, and Russia,
among many others. What a day!
Saturday, February 1 was set-up day, and the day we came to understand the
new trend in Tucson this year: people arriving to sell and buy earlier and
earlier each year in Tucson. We heard about dealers setting up their booths with
several people waiting and making purchases as they unpacked! The same thing
happened with us and the other vendors in the ballroom with us at the wholesale
show at the Inn Suites. In the first couple of days of the show, several buyers
indicated they had been in town for a week already, had made their purchases,
and were ready to go home-- and it was barely February!
 Actually, as Tucson gets larger and longer-- there are currently more than 30
shows going on simultaneously-- it has gotten to the point where many buyers
have to return home long before the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show (TGMS) even
begins. A number of dealers we spoke to want to shorten the shows, but it will
be a difficult change to bring about.
Our show officially opened Sunday, and to the great relief, no doubt, of many
vendors, sales were brisk. No doubt many were concerned that the combination of
the current economic conditions and the uncertainty of September 11 might affect
sales, as many had memories of the last big wholesale gathering in Denver, the
week of September 11, where sales were way off for many dealers. We were happy
too, of course, but had been confident we would do well as we have nice
minerals, carvings, wire jewelry, and the like at good prices, and so felt we
would always do well.
 The Inn Suites is a very pleasant place to spend two weeks selling. They even
had wine-tasting there a couple of the days! We've been selling there wholesale
for seven years now, and share the ballroom with three other small dealers like
us, a family who owns a Wyoming fossil fish mine, another who sells rare
gemstones, and another who does a lot of his own mining and specimen
preparation, as well as two large Brazilian importers, one who brought the huge
specimens seen in the photos. He was asking $11,000 for the crystal pictured
with Richard, and a similar price for the amethyst geode seen with Cheryl.
Without leaving the room, we obtained some pyrite suns from southern Illinois
for a Club member, some polished kyanite "sticks" as the Brazilians
call them, lovely stones for Cheryl's jewelry, and a few outstanding, intense
violet clusters of amethyst mounted on wooden bases from Uruguay, as well as a
polished quartz crystal from Brazil about 4 inches long, loaded with golden
needles of rutile sprayed throughout as if by an artist!
We had expected to see piles and piles of vanadinite as we had in Denver, but
saw very little, except for some especially large, well-crystallized pieces with
correspondingly high prices. This illustrated to us one of the most fascinating
and frustrating realities of the mineral world: you never know what you will
see! You'll see gobs of something new and exciting at one show, then, expecting
to see more at the next show, it's nowhere to be found. Or the dealer who had it
doesn't show up again. He's changed shows, or moved, or his minerals were held
up in customs, or . . . who knows what happened to him? And then, at the next
show, when you've given up, there he is again, but the quality is not as good,
or the price is higher, or he has something else entirely!
 It's always exciting to meet new people during the shows. Several Club
members were able to stop by at the Inn Suites, and more later at the Tucson Gem
& Mineral Show, and it was great to meet them or see them again. The buyer
for the Field Museum in Chicago purchased some of our specular hematite for sale
at their recently expanded gift shop. She said they might be able to offer Club
memberships, too. An administrator from the Gemological Institute of America (GIA)
in Carlsbad, California, stopped by, and we quizzed her about the recent news
reports of possible Al Qaeda ties to the tanzanite mines, as you may have heard
about. She said the GIA would be issuing a press release in conjunction with the
U.S. government, reassuring people that it was merely an isolated incident.
We'll tell you more when we know more. The president of American Gemological
Laboratories in New York bought a nice parcel of Ocean Jasper from us at the
TGMS Show, and said they would be using it in one of their temporary displays.
We said we'd send them a copy of our Ocean Jasper write-up to go with it.
Yes, the first week of the wholesale show goes by quickly, and we try to
steal away whenever possible to do more shopping, looking for future minerals
for the Club, and the like. Fatigue starts to set in around then, and nerves
start to get on edge. (Toward the end of Pasadena Show last year, the wife of a
well-respected dealer and an internet dealer looked like they were about to get
into fisticuffs.) Tuesday of the second week, our son Keenan flew in to help us
with the TGMS show, and Wednesday we set up there, and the show of course went
from Thursday to Sunday. With its theme of "African Gems &
Minerals," we knew we were in for a treat.
 Being a part of the TGMS show is a great privilege, just simply being around
some of the world's finest mineral specimens, both on exhibit and for sale. The
exhibits were as always uniformly excellent. One large case consisted of nothing
but aquamarine crystals of intense color, mainly from Pakistan, but also from
Brazil and Namibia. Another case had lovely maroon sugilite in quartz specimens
from South Africa, something you rarely see. (Check our web page for more
photos.) One case held three large tanzanite crystals of intense blue color, the
largest approaching 4" long and 2" wide. The dealer across was
offering a similar tanzanite crystal with an asking price of $22,000. Another
large case featured rocks and minerals of Madagascar, including labradorite,
celestite, Ocean Jasper, quartz, and rose quartz. Another included the best of
the best of the fluorite from the Rogerley mine, England, we'll be featuring in
March. Unbelievable! Police guards were on hand for a wonderful case of large
gold specimens on matrix, one more than 6" high, and another, smaller case
housing the Oppenheimer Diamond, a 253.7-carat natural diamond crystal from
South Africa now owned by the Smithsonian Institution. (See photo to the right.)
 Sunday was quite a day, breaking down at two shows, and we had to rent a
trailer to bring all our booty home. Keenan flew back home Sunday, and we vowed
to sleep late Monday. We did, but what is the best way to recover from
exhaustion? That's right, shop some more, and we spent much of Monday with a
Brazilian dealer picking out hematite "Iron Roses" and kyanite, among
others. We love Tucson!
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