February 4-6, 2002

The past few days have been spent running around the various venues in pursuit of more material for posting to the web.   Always a bit freightning to look at the checkbook after the first week in Tucson and realize that there has a been a large flow of cash... out of the checking account.  Such is life.

I will start this installment with some shots of the grounds at the Inn Suites.  This place is rather nice in that the rooms are spread out over a kind of garden-like grounds.  It is really quite relaxed and there are many places to spread out on a piece of lawn and soak up some sunlight.
 

 
 

I spent some time in rummaging through the flats of Terry Szenics (Szenicsite) material at the Inn Suites.  Terry's noted for finding new minerals and this show he has a new copper arsenate (NaCaCu5(AsO4)4Cl.5H2O) from the Abundancia Mine, Guanaco, Chile called Lemanskiite - named after Chet Lemanski.   The picture below is typical  specimen fom the group that I obtained.  It has flat lying crystal sprays up to 0.7 cm across.
 

Ian Bruce, who is sharing a room at the Inn Suites with Terry, had more specimens from the Glidden Collection that I rummaged through.  Most interesting from this group were two specimens with Baddeleyite crystals.  Baddeleyite is a simple oxide of zirconium and quite rare.

Also at the Inn Suites DeTrin minerals has set up a large tent near the entrance to the parking lot.  I drove by this the first day without giving much thought to it as these venues tend to be filled with rather poor material.  Blew it on that one I'll tell you.  Mark Wrigley pointed me towards the tent and oh boy!  Danny Trinchillo has at least 20,000 specimens of chinese and brazilian material laid out on fifty tables.  Everything from a to z.  Admittedly a lot of the material is not so good but if one is willing to put the time in there were some real jewels in the mix.   I spent a good two hours there running up and down the tables filling up two flats worth of material.  I even found several fine specimens of the blue apatites from Paraiba, Brazil.  Below are just two average pieces of the dozen or so new specimens of this material I obtained.  I had just about given up any hope of finding any more of these after the bad news earlier from Luis Menenzes.

While at the Inn Suites I paid a visit to Herb and Monica Obodda in their room. They are not set up for selling at the Inn Suites but they do have about 30 or so flats of material.   Herb's always has the best material one could hope to wade through.  I found several very interesting and old Cornish specimens including a gold from Godrevy Cliff, Port Isaac, a fluorite specimen from the East Pool Mine, Illogan, and a very fine phosgenite from the Bage Mine, Cromford, Devonshire.

On to the Executive Inn.  First I have to relate that the E.I. as it is referred to, has been completely refurbished!  It is an entirely new place!!  Below is a shot of the lobby and also the new-look hall ways.
 

About six or seven weeks ago I contacted Jordi Fabre who had indicated that there was a new find of color zoned Spanish fluorite available from La Collada, Asturias.  This fluorite has an interesting color change property between incandescent and fluorescent lighting going from reddish violet to dark blusih violet.  I sort of shot in the dark with Jordi and asked him to select 5 specimens for me of varying sizes to present here online once he got here.  Yesterday, the 6th, I went to pick them up and was quite pleased to see that he'd given me five very fine specimens.  He had a lot more in his room also that were of equal or better quality.
 

 

I spent some more time in his new room - no longer the "fishbowl" - he now calls it "the Pocket". Below is a shot of Show organizer Marty Zinn (left) and Jordi (right) reaching into his "Pocket".  Jordi also had some other interesting material including a new find of Prehnite from Spain and also a few more of the now classic gem sphalerites from Spain.   I obtained some of each and moved on to the Ballroom.

The Ballroom is one of the better venues at the E.I.  I saw my friend Gilbert Gauthier who was set up there and made some selections of fine uranium bearing specimens including this smoker cuprosklodowskite.  Last summer a large boulder was found at the mine that was rich in cuprosklodowskite.  This type of material has not been seen in decades from the long closed Musonoi mine and will likely not be seen again.  You may remember that I found some of this material at Munich from Gilbert.  He had only a few small pieces and two large specimens that I picked up.   Below is a picture of a fine large cabinet specimen of cuprosklodowsite with beautful sprays of crystals to 1.3 cm in length.  The off yellow material is rutherfordine.
 

I have prepared two mpg files for viewing of the ballroom.  One is a 360 degree turn taken from the center of the ball room and the other is a 180 degree pan taken from the west side of it.

The ballroom is where Doug Wallace of Mineral Search is located as well as Delta Bravo (emeralds), Clive Queit (who also has a number of the new poldervaartites available), Coogan's (noted for locality gold specimens), Fenn's Gems and Minerals (who always has fine Mexican material) and several others.

I have been here about 1 week now and have had a chance to see just about everything here and talk with many people here at the show.  To this point the general concensus is that there is not really anything substantially new.  Most people agree that the poldervaartites from South Africa are probably the best of the new find material here.   What everyone also continues to feel is that the Chinese material is substantially increasing in quality.  I tend to think that this country has become and will remain a super power in the world of minerals for some time to come.

I won't be moving about the city too much for the next several days as I want to focus on getting the 100s of specimens I purchased over the past few days online.

Another report in a couple days...

John