October 24th - Set up Day

I arrived in Munich on the morning of the 23rd of October to brilliant blue and crisp skies.   Southern Germany can be undeniably gorgeous in the fall with the color changes in the deciduous leaves.  To my chagrin that first day was spent in jet lag recovery.  It is nine hours time difference from California to Munich... This morning I realized that there was some gravatational truth to the saying "oh what a difference a day makes"... I awoke to rainy skies and cold dampness that was my total experience here last year.

Anyway, I got ready to hit the street at 9:00 am after a nice breakfast at the hotel I am staying at.  It is Hotel Biederstein located in the English Garden district of Munich.  I have about a 1 km walk to the closest U-Bahn station which is the Munchener Freiheit station.  The underground system is exceptional and easily negotiated... Unless you forget to look at which end point the train is headed to which is what I did this morning.   After a quick shuffle between stops I was headed back in the right direction and made it to Munchen Messe where the show will be held around 10:15 am.

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Click here to see a short mpg of a ride on the U-Bahn leaving from the Kolumbus Platz station.
 
 
 

After leaving the Messestadt West station there is a short walk to the entrance of the Messe.

The entrance to the Messe.  Click here to see an mpg profiling the front of the Messe

The show this year is being held in three VERY large buildings.  It is hard to appreciate how large these buildings are.  Without using a tape measure it appears that each "hall" is as large as the entire main show floor room at the Tucson Show.  Clearly the Munich show is immense and the prospects of being able to see everything is nearly impossible in the three days that the show is open.  Hence, to have a hope of seeing as much as you can one must get here during the days of set up.  The show officially opens the 26th and closes the 28th... Lots of ground to cover between now and the end of Sunday...
 
 

Upon entering the Messe you enter a large entry way.  This place will be packed on Friday.

 

This is about as empty as the halls will be.  This composite shot was taken near the center of Hall B3 looking to the east.

After getting into the halls where the show is to be I found Jordi Fabre already set up in Hall B2.  He had some very fine specimens of gem orange to red colored sphalerite from Spain available from a new find made this past summer.  I then ran into some other familiar faces including Herb Obodda, Cater Rich, Bill Larson, and I an Bruce and we all exchanged hellos and set out to see what we could find during set up day.

I wandered over the hall above here where (B3) where some Moroccan dealers were already spread out.  News alert:  The quantity of bright red vanadinite has not diminished in the least since the Sainte Marie aux Mines Show.  One of the more interesting new finds from this country that seems to keep cranking out new things are crystals of yellowish green fluorapatite.   I saw two dealers who had specimens from the new find in the Anti-Atlas Mts but 99% of them were just short of horribly damaged.  I did find two however that were not totalled.  I am hopeful that tomorrow will have more of these new apatites available.
 
 

This specimen has three crystals including a 1.5 cm doubly terminated crystal.

There were also several Chinese dealers in Hall B3 set up with many specimens of fluorite.  Nothing really new but I did find several specimens of fluoirte and also a few of the garnets that have been coming out in good quality lately.
 
 

This is a shot in the SE corner of Hall B2 of some people setting up.

This shot was taken near the center of Hall B2 looking east.  Lots of empty tables still...

 

This is a shot in the midst of Hall B1 of set up day.

Another shot taken near the center of Hall B1 looking east.

As the day came to a close I was somewhat unsettled that I had not found anything of exceptional rarity or interest.  When you least expect it... expect it.  I saw Adriana Pagano setting up specimens in Hall B2 from the Pagano Minerals.  What caught my eye was the word Behierite written on the side of a box... Bingo! Behierite is an excrutiatingly rare mineral composed of Tantalum, Niobium, Boron and Oxygen.  It is known only from a pegmatite in Madagascar.  I opened the box and found my mineral nirvana for the day.  Seven crystallized specimens of this rare species waiting to be had.  So... I took them.  She also had a few specimens of the aluminum rich variety of tourmaline known as liddicoatite.  I picked a few of them up and headed off gleeful in my "score" of the rare behierite specimens.
 
 

Here are two shots of one of the seven specimens I found of  behierite.   Associated minerals include lilac tourmaline,  rhodozite and blue apatite.

Close up of this 3.5 mm crystal.

I look forward to tomorrow as most of the dealers will be set up and open for business.  Should be another busy day!

See you tomorrow,

John