Mineral Shows - Trinity Mineral Co

Amethyst from Brazil with multiple phantoms.

Rock could sense it and then dispense it with the best of them...

A few of Rock's specimens and his picture with one of his... "kids".

As a fan of the game this was the best thing on display at the show.

Goethite on Calcite on Amethyst from Uruguay.

Ever the comedian Rock in the background and this unreal calcite/amethyst scepter from Uruguay.

Rock had a great Tiger suite. Here is a caledonite.

Dioptase and wulfenite from Tiger.

Fabulous leadhillite from Tiger.

A smokin' diaboleite from Tiger.

A better than average wulfenite from the Glove Mine in Arizona from Rock's collection.

Marty Zinn placed a couple of cases in also featuring blue minerals.

A small section of one of Marty's cases.

A fine display of sand dollar azurites from Australia.

Brett Keller - the force behind Mineral Wines - had a gorgeous case of miniatures along with some of his award winning wines.

Rick Kennedy had the best display of benitoite. He is a fellow blue triangle junky.

Rick had his 5+ carat cut benitoite on display. That is not a cheap rock!

The Dorris family and what I consider to be the best amazonite specimen in the world - the gigantic baveno twin!

Another case was set up in the memory of David Eidahl. I actually had a chance to know Dave back in the 1970s. His love of minerals was infectious!

A mouth watering phosphophyllite!

A specimen with boleite crystals to over 2 cm!!

Crystallized gold from California.

Not much to say about this specimen except "Defibrillator! Stat!"

Dave died way too young... Fortunately his collection will live on at the LA County Museum.

Scott Rudolph had some fantastic minerals on display.

Stunning Tsumeb willemite.

I think the world's best scorodite come from this locality.

There were a lot of nose imprints on the glass in front of this one.

I am not usually a big fan of aquamarines but this one rang a bell for me.

Here is a benitoite specimen in Jim & Gail Spann's display for diabetes. Here is something that happens a lot in this hobby.

I originally etched this specimen from material purchased from Collector's Edge. I then sold the specimen to a collector in

British Columbia. I subsequently bought the specimen back, held it for a while then sold it to a collector in Alabama. The

collector in Alabama sold his collection to Collector's Edge and I bought it back from them at the East Coast Show. I held on

to it for a while and then sold it in Munich, Germany two and half years ago. And then I see it again here in Tucson. I have

owned this rock three times in the past and Collector's Edge has owned it two times in the past.

Minutes before the close of the show on Sunday. Dennis Beals' face said it all.... I wanna go home...

As I said a few times where did the time go?

Most everyone I spoke with said that this was a strange Tucson experience. I think two things contributed to that feeling. Number one was the number of people who got sick. Everyone had at least one person close to them get sick. It is the worst Tucson Crud anyone can remember. I think something like that has a real impact on the atmosphere of an event like this. Those of us spared this malady found each other and constantly were looking for wood to knock on. A lot of my time was spent making sure Ronna was okay and comfortable and that was the case with many other dealers as well looking after the afflicted. The other thing was a slower show than in recent years. Last year I suggested to several people that if the price of oil dropped further it might impact the mineral market at the high end. Oil is at $30 a barrel as I write this after being at $125 a barrel just a few years ago. Couple that with an unstable stock market and I think a lot of big buyers were on the sidelines keeping their "powder dry". That said there was a very robust market in the wholesale market. Those of us at the Elk's Lodge were very surprised at the response to our 3 day show. And many dealers working the $5,000 and under market did as well or better than ever. This is not to say that there was no action in the big bucks arena. There was but it was muted compared to recent years.

New finds seem to be scarce and the most noteworthy was that of the golds from Brazil. But the pricing at 1000$/gram or higher is just not going to produce too many sales. My sense is the crooked state police in Brazil are getting full retail for the material that they have extorted from the locals and the dealers here are forced to ask crazy money for their specimens.

The real interest lies these days lies in the re cycling of collections. Several collections became available here and interest in them was very high. Everyone can relate to an old classic as the population of specimens is known and when the source, like Tsumeb, is closed people will put more faith in that than a new find where it may be just the tip of the ice berg that has been presented (Cavansite and Moroccan vanadinite as examples. When they first came out there was a rush on them like crazy. As time went by it became apparent that the new material would later be abundant.). Competition for old collections is fierce these days. By old I mean collections that have been built over 30 to 50 years.

Anyway, I think most people realize that some years will be better or worse than other years and this was basically an off year. Judging from the lack of parking at the venues it is apparent that the mineral hobby is not on life support. It is apparently going through another change and it will emerge different but still vital down the road.

Okay, that is my take and I always like to say that what I think is only important to me and I could be wrong on all of it but there you have it. I will see you here again from Tucson, Arizona in 2017!

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