Hall B2, in general, was where the better known dealers were set up.   There were also several dealers selling very appealing carvings made of such minerals as tourmaline, aquamarine, and quartz.  This tour of Hall B2 focuses mainly on the people who were there.  It was not possible to capture everyone but you will at least get a sense of who was in this hall...

First though a couple of images of the carvings that were available here.
 
 

These are two unique carvings.  The falcon on the left is comprised of aquamarine and the horse on the right
is made of white and smoky quartz. Bank was the dealer who had these fine carvings along with many others.

This was an owl carving made of Amethyst.  It was
mass produced but still had an appealling look to it.

Here's a blast out of the past!  The show organizers set up a facimile of the now departed Desert Inn in Tucson, Arizona as a
"cover" for one of the many bars that were to be found around the three halls.  All sorts of memorabilia from the place which
lives on only in our memories... Speaking of Arizona, I saw many people wearing the baseball hats of the New York Yankees.
It seems to be a fad item of fashion here.  Anyway, I am still getting over the fact that my beloved Oakland A's lost to New York
(I still can not understand how that happened!) and am happily rooting on the Arizona Diamond Backs against New York in the
World Series. At this time Arizona is up 2 games to none.  However, that does not mean anything when playing against the Yankees.
GO ARIZONA!!   PLEASE BEAT THOSE DANG YANKEES!
Sorry for the digression.  Now back to the show

I always look forward to seeing Gilbert Gauthier.  He always has ome very interesting minerals on display.
The image on the right and above are of one of the finest becquerelite specimens I have ever seen that I bought
from him.  I saw a great one in Tucson last year but this was the better one yet from Gilbert!  The other mineral
associated with the becquerelite is uranophane.  The matrix is massive uraninite.

Here is French dealer Jean Francois Astier.  He has very fine Moroccan specimens that are
focused in the thumbnail and miniature sizes. All of his specimens are of the highest quality.

Here are Spanish dealer Jordi Fabre with his assistant Julia Elena Van Gelderen de Mittermaier.
 Jordi had some new finds of the gem sphalerite from the Aliva, Picos de Europa, Cantabria, Spain.

Here is Christian Rewizter (on the phone) who was also set up in B2.  Christian had some
excellent Romanian specimens including Gold, Scheelite and the new finds of Bournonite.

Here's German dealer Uli Burchard chatting it up with Herb Obodda (standing).  When I said, "Smile everybody!" Herb
split and up popped Marty Zinn.  That's not exactly how it happened but it makes for a good storyline...

The smiling woman behind the counter is Adriana Pagano.  She and Dr. Renato Pagano were the ones with the
new specimens of behierite.  Behierite is an exceedingly rare borate of tantalum and niobium. The image on the right
is one of the seven specimens of behierite I obatined from them.

 

Here is the back of Francois Lietard.  Francois always had some of the best Moroccan, Afghan and Paki material available.  This year however
he also had one of the more interesting new finds of Munich 2001:  calcite twins from Brazil.  The specimen on the right is one of the finest of the
large cabinet specimens that he had available from this limited find.  It has over a half dozen fish tail twins to 3.5 cm across.  He sold all of them
during the show. This pictured specimen which I have is 15 x 10 cm in size.  Price for the aesthetic piece is $1450.00. Calcite usually does not
"float my boat" but these were quite striking with the light green colored matrix.  Mucn more appealing than the recent Chinese specimens of a
couple years ago.  Francois' booth was always busy!  To see and hear a greeting from Francois click here

There was a steady stream of people at this show.  In the wake of the Denver Show
it was quite gratifying to see people out and buying specimens at a fevorish pace.
For a quick walk though Hall B2 click here