I pulled into Denver the afternoon of the 7th and it was a fairly miserable day here with a lot of rain all across Colorado and a traffic snarling multi-car accident about 35 miles west of Denver on I-70. Anyway, I am here and on the hunt for rocks.  

 
Above is show organizer Marty Zinn getting signs ready for posting.  It is a monumental planning effort to pull a show like this off and no one does it better than Marty here in the US.  On the right you get a sense that the stuff people are offering here weighs a bit...

A very few dealers were completely set up with the vast majority of rooms still empty during the first two days.  So far the general feeling is that there is not a whole lot that is new but it is still very early and as rooms open up there will certainly be new items that surface. 

My first stop was at Karp's room.  I had received an email from Ivo that there would be some new material from Burma that may be of interest.  He was right as he'd brought a nice assortment of topaz on matrix specimens.  Up till very recently the people mining these specimens have systematically cobbed the crystals off of their matrix.   Ivo has been working to educate them on the value of leaving the crystals on their matrix.   Below are two of the specimens that I obtained from them.  These will be posted later in the week on the web for your consideration.

 
These are two cabinet sized matrix specimens typical of the material brought by Karp to the show.

Copper from this locality is not new to the mineral world but the quality has substantially increased from recent years with some exceptional spinel-law twins available as well as the typically fine dendritic specimens.  I picked out what I thought were the best in terms of quality and value and headed on down the hall. Moving through the halls I found the door of Axinite-PM open.  This company is based in Moscow, Russia and they have direct links to suppliers from Kazakhstan.   One of the items that caught my eye (Thanks to Ken Roberts for the tip!) were some very fine specimens of crystallized native copper.  Below are several of the specimens I found that are typical of the lot.

 
A fine small minature specimen of crystallized dendritic copper.

 
These are miniature sized spinel law twin crystals of copper.  The
one on the left has some exceptionally complex crystal development.

Nevada dealer Scott Kleine has specimens of the new mineral Nevadaite.  Tony Nikischer of Excaliber minerals also has specimens of this new mineral available.   Nevadaite is a very rare phosphate species with the chemical formula: Cu(Al,V,Fe)5(PO4)(F,OH)5*7H2O.  This is one of those types of minerals that will be around for a very short window and then gone as it was found in a very limited and small area of the Gold Quarry Mine, Eureka Co., Nevada.  Nevadaite is also found occasionally with hewettite and fluellite.  Below are two pictures of one of the typical specimens I obtained from Scott.

 
This specimen has small spherical masses of nevadaite to .25 mm across. 

Brazilian dealer Luiz Menezes brought a nice array of a new find of hydroxyl-herderite specimens on matrix  from Linopolis, Minas Gerais, Brazil.  These crystals are interesting with two generations of mineralization.  The last phase did not completely cover the first generation as it created a sort of lip around the cores of the crystals.  The matrix consists of combinations of quartz, albite, lepidolite and feldspar.   Below are two of the typical specimens obtained from Luiz.

 
These are two of the herderite specimens that I picked up from Luiz.
The specimen on the left has crystals to 3.5 cm across.  

Terry Szenics was sharing a room with Rob Selecki of Ausrox.   Terry brought a new finds from Chile - wulfenite from the Chapacase Mine near Maria Elena and specimens of christelite from the San Francisco mine, Sierra Gorda.  Terry has some interesting stories to tell about the wulfenite.  He said that he'd seen specimens of these but only had latitude and longitude coordinates for a description of the locality.  This past summer he used a GPS to find the old mine - what Terry described as nothing more than really just a 20 foot deep exporation pit.  The wulfenite is found in a very small zone at the prospect.  The color is very red - almost looking like vanadinite or crocoite.    Crystals are typically just a few mm across with some rare specimens with crystals up to 1/2 cm across.   Terry said he would try again to recover more of these next summer in Chile but he said significant production is doubtful due to the small area rich enough in molybdenum to produce the wulfenite.  

 
The cabinet specimen on the left is the finest specimen known from this locality
according to Terry.  The picture on the right is a close up to display the crystal form.

 
This small miniature specimen has a very rich coverage of sky blue colored crystals
of christelite.  This specimen also has associations of dark green paratacamite.

Here's a photo of Terry getting down to the tedious part of this business - writing up an invoice.

This photo displays what some people will do attract attention... Hey they got mine!

This shot was taken on the 9th late in the afternoon.  The end of
another mineral day with the promise of another one to come!

More in the next few days!

2010
Tucson Show
San Francisco Show
East Coast Show
Denver Show
Munich Show

2011
Tucson Show
San Francisco Show
East Coast Show
Denver Show
Munich Show

2012
Tucson Show
West Coast Show
East Coast Show
Denver Show 
Munich Show

2013
Tucson Show
Sainte Marie Show
Crystal Days (Poland)
Munich Show