October 27th

I made it to the show around 11am deciding that a sleep in was in order.   I spent most of the day just visiting with people but I did catch up with a British fellow I met at the Sainte Marie Show - Mark Wrigley - who was travelling with his son George.  Mark specializes in fluorite and Romanian minerals.   Anyway, he pointed out some of the new material that is making its way out of Romania to me.  I have to confess that up to this show I have more or less remained ignorant of Romanian material since it looks so much like Peruvian material and is generally sulfides and quartz or calcite... Species that are a far cry from my beloved triangular blue favorite - benitoite... I know what a prude I am...  Anyway, on to the scheelite.  We visited several dealers in Hall B3 who had scads of material from there and I zeroed in on scheelites.  Scheelite from Romania is not common.  It was considered exceptionally rare just a few years ago and crystals are never large.  Compared to the chinese material that is available they are not as good but for the location they quite interesting.  I did a sweep of the show and came up with nine specimens that did not have the word insanity associated with the price.  Below is an average specimen of one of the nine
 
 

4 cm specimen with drak doubly terminated crystals of scheelite to 9 mm in length.

Christian Rewitzer also had specimens of the scheelite available.
 
 

Here's a shot of Christian on the phone at his booth.

Later as the day wore on I wandered about and decided to pull the trigger on some of these great new specimens of schorl from Namibia.  Yes, schorl is a black mineral but the size and quality of these crystals from the Erongo Mountains and occasional associate with smoky quartz are quite striking.  Erich Schmidt of Minerals & Rough Stones had the display.  He had some remarkable specimens of blue topaz, jermejevite, aquamarine, smoky quartz, and the schorls.  The schorls are referred to as Mercedes Benz crystals with their sharp trigonal terminations.  These specimens are found in large gas pockets in granite and not in pegmatite dikes.   I picked up several specimens and called it a day.
 
 

Here's an assortment of the schorl specimens avaialble from Schmidt.  The largest crystals are 8 cm in length.

Here's a specimen of straw-like aquamarine 12 x 8 cm.

 

Here's a 5 cm specimen of schorl and smoky quartz.

This is 4 x 3 cm cluster of schorl crystals.

 

One other item of note are the exceptional specimens of Italian sulfur specimens here at the Show.    For the past three years I have seen only a few scattered specimens from Sicily.  This year there was a very nice selection of sulfur available.   I thought aboput getting some for a page update when I got back home to California but my friend Dr. Alessandro Genazanni had the chance to procure a nice array of these new sulfurs and will prepare a page for your perusal shortly.  It will be linked in from my pages.

This evening I met up with Jordi Fabre and his two assistants: Julia de Mittermaier and Jordi Gil at Marienplatz for supper at the Ratskeller.  This establishment serves traditional Bavarian dishes.  I had the pig's leg with red kraut and something that looked, tasted and felt like dumplings.  It was excellent.  Julia had a leg of duck and that is on the agenda for next year.  Man that was good!

The show this year is turning out to be a very good one.

See you tomorrow,

John