Mineral Shows - Trinity Mineral Co

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The Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show Specimens

June 26, 2003

Today was another warm and humid and ultimately drenching day. lt started out rather mild and sunny but as the day progressed it got cloudier and cloudier and then around 3:45 pm or so it completely unloaded on the Val d'Argent with torrential rains and strong winds. I was in downtown Sainte-Marie at the time pulling Euros out of the ATM and might as well have been standing in a shower while waiting for the money to emerge. Pure fun.

Click the picture to load an mpg file with sounds of thunder in the Val d'Argent.

A quick word about money here in Europe. When traveling I found it cheapest to get money from an ATM versus bringing traveler's checks or getting Euros ahead of time. The cost is a small fraction less than 1/2 of of 1% to pull money from your account regardless of your homeland currency. It is also determined based on the current exchange rate for that moment during the day. Converting traveler's checks require paying a commission as does trying to get a large advance inside a bank. For what I do using the ATM is the only way to go. It can be cumbersome, however, when you need to get your hands on $5,000 to $10,000 and you can only do it at $500 per transaction. A small trade-off in my mind.

On to the minerals. As I mentioned at the end of the report from yesterday I visited French dealer Renee Daulon. Renee spends a great deal of time in China and frequently pulls out many outstanding specimens of a large variety of species such as fluorite, wolframite, calcite, scheelite, beryl, etc. On a tip from Scott Werschky I went to see Rene and found that he had a dozen or so specimens of the rare mineral Kesterite from Ping Wu. This locality is best known for its fine orange scheelite and tabular beryl specimens. Kesterite, a copper, zinc, and tin sulfosalt, was first brought to the market by Dan Weinrich and Rob Lavinsky last year at the Denver Show under the tentative name of "Pandaite". The crystals were universally covered with a greenish colored oxide called mushistonite which is a copper, zinc tin hydroxide. Anyway, it turns out the Rene was responsible for bringing just about all of these out of China and dispersing them to the various channels that be. There are, according to Rene, only 100 or specimens in existence from this limited, one time find. No more have been found since the one pocket was discovered in 2002. Clearly, from what I have seen Dan Weinrich had the best of these of any dealer at the time last year or since. The specimens available here were not as good as Dan's but for anyone who missed the first round this will be your last chance. I was surprised when I saw this hoard of thumbnail sized specimens available and reacted quickly to obtain them. Rene also had a fine specimen of muscovite with garnet from Fujian, China that I could not resist.

These are two of the specimens obtained from Rene of Kesterite coated with Mushistonite. The
top specimen is about 3 cm across and the lower one has a 2.5 cm cluster on muscovite matrix.

This is the spessartine on muscovite from Fujian I purchased from Rene. It measures about 4 cm across

In the International tent I found Argentinean dealer Jorge Descal with a new supply of dioptase specimens from Dumesnil, Cordoba, Argentina. The specimen pictured here has free standing prismatic crystals to just under 1 cm in length. I purchased a few of the pieces without damage and moved on.

In the Theater I was working through the isles when something caught my eye at the booth of Pierre Clavel - specimens that at first appeared to be azurite and fuzzy malachite. A closer inspection of the unlabeled specimens revealed that they were brochantite and the blue was in fact linarite! This was rather exciting since it is the first occurrence of linarite that I know of from Morocco. The habit is very similar to that found in Socorro County, New Mexico with flat lying but large crystals of linarite to 2 cm in length or even a little more. The brochantite looks just like the Congo material that the Gobin brothers had here last year. Pierre owns the property and is hopeful that it will produce cuprite specimens. Below are several pictures of several of the specimens I purchased from Pierre and even a picture of Pierre himself.

These are two of the specimens obtained from Pierre - both cabinet sized specimens. The blue is the linarite and green is brochantite.

Here is Pierre and several more of the specimens obtained from him.

Elsewhere in the Theater I caught up with Rhiggi Umberto. Umberto travels a lot to Morocco and the middle east and also has a mine where collects rich amber yellow fluorite specimens. This year he did not fail to make available some fine rich colored specimens of fluorite from Les Causses and he also has some of the reddest vanadinite I have ever seen. I still maintain that there are an uncountable number of vanadinite specimens available from Morocco and likely will be for many years to come. But, when pieces from the primo zone come around, well, you just simply have to react. I did.

This one of the dozen or so specimens of fluorite I picked up from Umberto.

And one of a dozen specimens of vanadinite.

Outside in front of the Theater I saw the Gobin's whole sale tent and saw a flat of cuprosklodowskite and several other uranium bearing species. Christophe says that this is the last of the uranium specimens he will ever have. I bought the flat from him and was filled with radiating joy.

A fine small cabinet specimen of the cuprosklodowskites from the Gobins.

Also here at the show as I mentioned earlier are folks from UK Mining Ventures who operate the Rogerley Mine. I saw two specimens in particular that are easily the finest in terms of color and luster that have been produced from the mine. I took some pictures of the two best below and will likely be adding specimens of these gorgeous fluorites to my website at the Denver Show time. The specimens below are available. If you're interested let me know.

These are pictures of two specimens so that you can see the exceptional clarity and glassy luster
of the specimens that they are now recovering from the mine. Note the blue colors which reflect the
rich fluorescent properties of fluorite from this mine. Both are fine cabinet sized specimens.

Much more to come!

The Sainte-Marie Show Specials

Follow the links below to catch up on the latest from Sainte-Marie 2003

June 25th Report	June 26th Report	June 27th Report	June 28th Report	June 29th Report
Trinity Mineral Co	Rare Minerals	Benitoite Mine	Tsumeb	Mineral Shows.com

Also see the reports of the show prepared by Mark Wrigley and Kiyoshi Kiikuni

The 2000 Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show Report

The 2001 Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show Report

The 2002 Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show Report

The Official Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show Website

All images, text and stuff on these pages copyright John Veevaert -Trinity Mineral Company 2003
The material on these pages may not be used without permission.