[Rockhounds] A word from Tucson

[J. R. Hodel]

Hi all:
 
I enjoyed seeing John Cornish at his room in the Inn Suites, and wandering through the many famous dealers and collectors at the fabulous center of Tucson minerals and fossils along the I-10 strip though town.  Hi John!  Thanks for your photos and reports!
 
I didn't buy much at the shows around Tucson before today.  The prices seemed higher than ever, and I didn't see much that I havent already collected one way or another.  But meeting folks who are well known in collecting circles, and seeing famous mineralogists discussing the offerings was very interesting.
 
I stopped by Jordi Fabre's room, which had many wonderful European and North African minerals, and it was crowded with famous people, like the retired curator from the Smithsonean, John White.  He had a pocketfull of rocks he had found on the other side of I-10, and handed one to a swiss strahler, and told him it was a spinel-twin spinel crystal, atg which the strahler said "Thanks so much for the onwderful gift!"
 
Of course, Dr White helps Jordi with making mineral descriptions perfect on his web site, so they have a close association.  I shouldn't have been a bit surprised to see him in the Fabri sales room.
 
We did visit the main show today for about 4 hours.  My feet gave out on those concrete floors.  There were fabulous exhibits of minerals from all over the world, both informational and competetive.  Rob Lavinsky had an exhibit with a spodumene/kunzite that I doubt I could have carrried all the way to the truck!  
 
The sales areas were full of wonderful things too, so many that I can't really list things.  If you have heard of it, it was for sale in Tucson today.  I saw price tags up into the low 6 figures!  and POR tags too (price on request!)   I was inhibited a little because the prices for really nice miniatures and small cabs were so high!
 
I did buy Martha some black pearls, she has been studying them for years, and has a string of white pearls she received from my Mom years ago.  Mom got them on a trip that included 2 weeks in Japan.  It was Valentine's Day. after all.  I also bought 2 faceted Santander sphalerites that were bright yellow, gave one to an old friend, Ruth, and the other to Martha.
 
For myself, I got 3 polished slices of petrified wood, 2 red, green, yellow and blue from AZ and one that was black and white from Utah. They had one slice that a forestry professional told them had been hit by lightning twice in life, so they learned a little something about their product at the show too.  They showed me the marks in the tree rings caused by the two strikes several decards apart.  That ancient tree lived on a ricge for SURE!
 
Tomorrow we'll visit Saguaro National Park on the way back to Cochise County, out home base for trips to Arizona.
 
We had maintenance done on the new truck last week, too, They discovered that the power steering pump was failing, and had to remove all the radiators to get to it.  Glad that was under warrenty!
 
KoR!
 
JR in AZ for now!
 


      

--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
---