It is inevitable to find people you know at a show like this and I encountered Scott Werschky of Miner's Lunchbox in Reno, Nevada several times during the course of the show.  He scrounged up an interesting lot of tourmaline from a new locality in Kashmir, India.  The crystals are mostly an a greenish aquamarine blue color and many have deep indigo blue caps.  Scott got them all so you will have to contact him to get your hands on one.  He sold one to San Francisco collectors Jesse Fisher and Joan Kurezska that is likely the best of the lot.

Here are two specimens of tourmaline from the new find.  The crystal on the left is about 12 cm in length
and fully terminated. It is now in the collection of Jesse Fisher and Joan Kurezska.  The crystal on the right is
about 4 cm in height and has a deep blue cap.

I saw some attractive quartz with hematite phantoms specimens from Megu, Sichuan, China with several dealers however the best were found with French dealer Rene Daulon and Chinese dealer Tienwen and Jinshi Liu of Southwest China Mineral Museum.

The miniature specimen on the left has hematite colored phantoms and small crystals
of epidote. The specimen on the right is the fine specimen of beryl with kesterite.

Rene always has an amazing array of Chinese specimens - all hand picked in China and all free of damage.  He had a small hoard of the rare mineral kesterite with mushistonite from Ping Wu, Sichuan, China.  One specimen in particular caught my eye which was a double tabular aquamarine crystal with a cluster of sharp and lustrous crystals of kesterite.   It was not cheap but it is unique to any I have seen of these.  Typically these are found on muscovite and are associated with cassiterite, beryl and rarely scheelite.  This beryl specimen was pretty cool though.

In Hall A4 Jentsch Minerals - a German dealer - had a new find of various colored spinel crystals from Morogoro, Tanzania.  These were found this past July. The primary color is violet but there were many specimens colored red, blue and dark brown.  Some of the crystals were quite large though mostly all are pitted as they grew concurrent with enclosing calcite matrix.  Several of those that he had left were clean octahedral crystals and I found one unique crystal he had stashed away that is dodecahedral in form.

 
This is one of the spinel specimens with light green diopside that I obtained from Jentsch.  
That is him in the checkered shirt in the photo on the right..

You can always expect to find something new from Brazil in the hands of Brazilian dealer Luis Menezes. This year was no different.  He had two new finds of apatite - one from the Sapo mine with bluish tinged yellow colored apatite crystals on cleavlandite matrix and an unusual specimen with a  flower shaped crystal group of apatite on a microcline crystal  from the Mantanopolis, Espirito Santo. He was also carrying a group of specimens from a new find of microlite from the Urubu Mine in Intinga, Minas Gerais.

This is one of the microlite specimens I obtained.  It is a 1 cm crystal.

This is the apatite specimen from Mantenopolis, Brazil.

Here are two of the new apatite specimens from the Sapo Mine.

Several dealers including Russian dealer Yury Tsygankov,  Czech Republic dealer Petr Sztacho and Spanish dealer Jordi Fabre had a few specimens of a new find of hessonite from Bazhenovsky mine near Asbestos in the Ural Mountains of Russia.  The majority of these root beer brown colored crystals have a matted luster or pitted surface.  I found three - only three - that had brilliantly lustrous crystals.

Here are two of the three hessonite specimens from Asbestos, Russia.

Here is dealer Petr Sztacho of the Czech Republic.

Yury also had one specimen of kammererite with scattered deep green crystals of chrome sphene from Sarani, Russia.  Last year I saw one of these that was incredible in its luster, color and size.  This specimen lends itself to trimming into at least two specimens and maybe three.  If you want it now before the trim the cost is $750.

This is a 10 cm specimen of kammererite with chrome sphene crystals to 1.5 cm across.

I had a chance to visit with Brice and Christophe Gobin to see what was new with them and was shown some marvelous new French quartz gwindel specimens from Chamonix that they will have available at the Tucson Show.  These are a cut way above anything I have seen in a long time with uniform dark smoky color and mirror luster.  They will have these available at the Westward Look show in early February in Tucson.

 
Here's Christophe Gobin in his stylish booth in the International Mineral Pavilion.

German dealer Werner Radl is primarily a gem dealer.  He spends most of his time in Tanzania gathering tanzanite and tsavorite (grossular) garnets for cutting.  He had a small selection of gem grossular and a number of good tanzanite crystals.  He mentioned that the mining is winding down at Arusha and crystals of any sort are becoming next to impossible to obtain.  He said that the demand for tanzanite is so high that just about anything that can be used for a cut stone is being sent to the oven for heat treatment.  He did have few good untreated crystals that were all expensive but I did find one rather good thumbnail sized crystal of canary yellow tanzanite. I also obtained a good number of gem green grossulars including one on graphite rich matrix.

Here is a specimen of the yellow tanzanite and the matrix specimen of grossular.

More to come!

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