It has been about one week since the last report on minerals here from Tucson.  The general perception that I and most other people had has been born out:  There is very little in the way of new material here this year.  There are many great specimens from old finds here but little in the way of anything exceptional for new finds.  There are the usual things like new calcite, fluorite and quartz localities, and a few other odds and ends like Ferberites from Australia but not much else to get the blood pressure up.   One quick little note to report here is that the dollar is currently at 0.7805 Euros as of 6:15 pm February 11th. That equals $1.28 to buy 1 euro.  It would appear that the Sainte Marie aux-Mines Show will have at least one less visitor this year unless there is a dramatic positive change in the exchange rate between now and June...

So, for the past several days I have been working diligently to prepare specimen images and meet with many people who have come in for the main show. 

I did venture out to the Westward Look Resort show for one afternoon and stuck my head into a few of the rooms there. Again, there was really not much in the way of anything new other than some feathery or herring bone habit copper specimens from Kazakhstan.  Mike Bergman brought these out of eastern Europe and they were quickly dispersed to other dealers.  This is not a new locality for copper but the habit is quite remarkable with the feathery configuration of many of the specimens.  I saw specimens from this find in the hands of Scott Werschky and Alan Day of Miner's Lunchbox who were set up at the Westward Look.

Two specimens of the new coppers from Kazakhstan - both are miniatures between 4 and 6 cm across.

Two specimens of the new coppers from Kazakhstan - both are miniatures between 4 and 6 cm across.

I spent a little while longer at the Westward Look and headed back to my room to continue with picture taking.

The rest of this installment of the Tucson show report will focus primarily on people.

One of the really rewarding aspects of mineral collecting is the people you encounter, and the friendships you make and work to keep. Minerals are the thread that bind us (the people lucky enough to be alive today) with the people who have left us their legacy of research, their collections, their names on many mineral specimens, and so on.  

On February 10th I was treated to my best day of the show so far by sharing the day with one of the venerable and most respected characters in this hobby - that of Mike Groben from Coos Bay, Oregon.  Mike has been an avid mineral collector since the 1950s and spent many days in the field with the likes of Al McGuinness, Art Montgomery and others in pursuit of the next great find.  He was struck down in the 1960s by a tragic logging related accident that left him a paraplegic.  That did little to slow Mike in the pursuit of his passion for minerals as he was a charter member of the Mineralogical Record sitting on the Board in 1970 and contributing several articles and he headed up numerous mineral related organizations in the Pacific Northwest. I have handled quite a few specimens from Mike's collection over the last several years and many people reading these reports will be able to look in the collection drawers and see some of the minerals that were once in his collection. Mike and I visited the Executive Inn and Inn Suites.  We saw many people he knew and it was a rare experience to be able to hear stories from the old Tucson Show days being hashed out by Mike and the other people.  It was a day I will remember for a long time to come.  Thanks Mike!