2007 Tucson Show Report

2007 Tucson SHOW REPORT

Time once again for the trek to the greatest of mineral shows, the "Mecca of Minerals", the Tucson Gem and Mineral show.

This will be our tenth trip to the Tucson show and it never disappoints.

We arrived in Tucson the afternoon of the 27th, and decided to hit some of the wholesale shows to see what was left over from the opening day rush. First we stopped by Minerama in the old Top Rock warehouse.

Minerama has some nice rocks but the prices are kind of steep as far as wholesale goes.

Our next stop was the new Top Rock wholesale show.

Not much quality left after the opening day melee so we walked away empty handed. There are other dealers set up in units around the Top Rock warehouse. We picked up a few interesting items and headed to our next stop "Magpies" pizza for a pie called the "Giant". If you have not enjoyed a magpies pizza your missing out on some very good pizza.

The next day we proceeded to the Clarion Hotel. This is the last year for the Clarion location and next all the dealers from this show will move to the Inn Suites. The Inn Suites is quickly becoming the new Executive Inn.

Aside from some really nice Mimetite with Hemimorphite, we did not find too much at the Clarion. If you are interested drop us a line as we have about ten pieces of the Mimetite with Hemimorphite that we have not posted yet. All are cabinet size. Below are some of the pieces we picked up.

SOLD SOLD

We also purchased some select pieces from the Mary Perry collection and will be posting these later.

We left the Clarion and headed for the Inn Suites where most of the quality dealers are located.

The dealers are now on the first and second floors and will by next year, will fill every room.

We stopped in to visit John Cornish of John Cornish Minerals to see what goodies he was offering this year. John is the owner of the Rats Nest claim and usually has some really nice Zeolites from his mine. This year he was also dispersing the Paul Harter Collection and had some very nice pieces for sale.

John was kept busy by cleaning the glass from the drool and forehead marks .

That's John with the mustache behind the counter. He has a very good sense of humor. The red cloud piece in the cabinet wanted $2500.00 and was well worth it. The Amethyst next to it was a Mexico piece and it wanted $400.00. NICE

From Johns room we went through several other rooms before visiting JBF Minerals. We purchased a really sweet Acanthite from Mexico that we will be posting later.

Here is Jeff Fast of JBF Minerals helping another customer. This guy is a riot. We could have spent hours talking about his adventures in the Middle East. He had a very interesting photo album in his room with pictures of the locals and mines he has visited and collected at. Below are some of the pieces Jeff had.

The Aqua wanted 3500.00 and the Tourmaline next to it wanted $4900.00. A little over our budget. You can see more at jbfminerals.com .

From there we went into Heliodor minerals. They had some very nice Vanadenites from Morrocco and silver and Acanthites from Mexico with alot of other nice things.

The Vanadinite in the center wanted $3500.00

They also had this large cabinet size Pyromorphite from China. How much? Well you know the saying, "If you have to ask, you can't afford it",

so I didn't ask.

49er minerals had some newly mined pieces of Wulfenite coated with Hemimorphite from the Finch, aka. Barking Spider Mine all were spectacular.

Also from 49er minerals was the piece pictured below.

It's a large cabinet piece about 16 cm accross with a fully intact vug of Selenite coated with the bluest of blue Azurite. This gorgeous rock only wanted $3000.00

Next in Konstantin Buslovich's room we saw these amazing spinel twinned Coppers.

The one on the left: $3000.00; the one on the right: $1200.00. These were about 10 cm tall. He also had a great cabinet size Dioptase going for $900.00.

We came back to this room later looking for some really great priced Heliodor from Russia but , as it goes in Tucson, he who hesitates loses.

I know these have been out for a while but this is the gemmiest barite I have ever seen. It is a large cabinet piece to about 14 cm with blades to about 4 cm.

This awesome Barite could be had at Gemini minerals for the price of a small car $9500.00.

In the room of Pavel Bantsekov we found this large Orange Quartz (red) and this incredible razor sharp giant Fluorite specimen.

We purchased a few nice things from Pavel.

Well that's it for our first Tucson Show report.

The next one we do will be more in depth with lots more pictures.

If you have never attended the Tucson show I cannot begin to describe the large volume of material. We come here with a modest budget to hand pick minerals that we would love to own and hopefully you will enjoy as well. We do not have hundreds of minerals to put on a site to sell. We hope you enjoy our site and even if you don't buy anything enjoy looking and offer some feedback. We answer all our e-mails.

Thanks for visiting

Mike and Diana Hopkins

M.A.D Mineralz