2016 Munich Gem & Mineral Show

John Veevaert 6152 Mia Vista Dr. Reno, Nevada USA (888) 689-8402

Return to the 2016 Munich Show homepage Show Report

We arrived in Munich around 3 PM on Monday the 25th via London. Nice uneventful flights are always the best. One day was spent recovering from jet lag. There is a 9 hour difference between Reno and Munich which your body can't treat as insignificant. But the old saying is what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. After a long rest we ventured into town to get some lunch. The Hauptbahnhof (Central Train Station) has numerous restaurants that serve excellent food. The other thing they have is a tobacco shop where you can buy CUBAN CIGARS! It is now legal to bring these into the US so guess what I did?

My little hoard of Cuban cigars.

After that we decided to go and hang out at Marienplatz. This is one of the most popular areas in Munich as it strictly a pedestrian area. The Rathaus-Glockenspiel is easy to look at too. Even though it was cold and raining lightly we found an outdoor setting area and enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate.

The Rathaus-Glockenspiel on Marienplatz .

Yours truly hanging on the 'Platz..

Ronna enjoying that hot cup of chocolate.

Later that evening we met up with Gunther Neumaier, Terry and Marie Huizing, Jesse Fisher and Joan Kureczka for a dinner at the Der Pschorr restaurant. It is a fairly short walk to there from Marienplatz and along the way we saw an open air market. I gotta tell you the produce in Germany is second to none! Very high quality food!

One of the stands in the open air market.

My mouth waters every time I look at those raspberries.

You can't get good cheese like this in the US...

And the cured meats are beyond delicious! Here comes the drool in my mouth again...

Our destination for our first dinner in Munich.

The first day at the show for us was on Wednesday. My first reaction was what has happened to this place? The whole arrangement of the show stands had been altered. All the old familiar "landmarks" of the show were gone as the entire setting has been changed. I felt myself constantly getting "lost".

Organized chaos during set up for the show.

One of my first stops was in Hall A5 to see Czech dealer Jaroslav Hyrsl. As usual he always has some very interesting things to ponder. This time it was specimens of crystallized lautite on tennantite from the Mundo Nuevo mine in Peru. This is only the second find ever of crystallized lautite. It is usually found as massive material. Lautite is a sulfide of copper and arsenic with the formula CuAsS. This material was first seen at this past Tucson show but better pieces were available here in Munich. Peruvian dealer Teodocio Ramos also specimens from this find.

Numerous crystals of jet black lautite on a larger crystal of tennantite.

The next stop was to see South African dealer Paul Balayer. Paul is a very active collector for the N'Chwaning mine and this year he had some new olmiities. Interestingly, he had collected quite a few from the same zone and yet came up with 4 different habits and colors for the olmiite. Everything from bright salmon color to dark root beer brown colors. He also had some spectacular mangano-calcite specimens. The habit is extraordinary with these. They are bright pink and very fluorescent under UV light.

A large cabinet specimen of mangano-calcite from the N'Chwaning mine.

Also set up with Paul was Bruce Cairncross. Bruce had brought a couple of dozen specimens from his own collection and I was quite pleased to get there early and snap up some really exceptional specimens he had. In particular is a TN specimen of shigaite with very large crystals. Bruce also had several other nice specimens including two TN specimens of marshallsussmanite, two TNs of hematite and a fine ettringite.

An exceptional 2.2 cm specimen of crystallized shigaite from the N'Chwaning mine.

Elsewhere in Hall A6 I came across Schmidt minerals with some interesting specimens of new prismatic baryte crystals from Brukkaros, Namibia. Most have phantoms and a lovely amber color. He also had one of the most oddly formed fluorite crystals I can recall seeing from the Orange River also in Namibia. It is a floater with a compressed octahedral form and strange color zoning. Couldn't resist that one.

A 5cm specimen of crystallized baryte with phantoms from Brukkaros.

A complete floater of fluorite from the Orange River, South Africa.

I ran into a cigar smoking pal Simon Harrison who'd just returned from Tanzania. He had a box full of pyrites from the Merelani Hills in Tanzania - the place where all the tanzanites come from. He's been going there for quite some time and when I mentioned how impressed I was with the tanzanites he had he said that they were more common than people know. The miners are so focused on bringing out only the tanzanite and tsavorite crystals that they just ignore the pyrite and hence, most of it gets dinged up badly. He managed to convince a few miners that nice, ding free pyrites would be worth bringing up and boy was I happy to see this lot. He had about 30 pieces in all. About 2/3ds had issues but I selected a number of pieces without any damage - truly a rarity for pyrite from this locality. The luster is exceptional and crystal form rare for pyrite with the icosahedron faces present on most. But two specimens, and one in particular, are incredible! You would swear that to get rounded faces these would have to have been polished. I have never seen anything like this in pyrite before.

An extraordinary specimen of pyrite with rounded faces from the Merelani Hills in Tanzania.

German dealer Christian Rewitzer is one of the most organized people in the business. His specimens are all well presented, labled and priced. There is never any guesswork like there is with about 75% of the rest of the dealers in this business. He had a very large supply of German fluorite on hand, so, like last year, I decided to plow through the new pieces he had and get enough for a German fluorite update.

A 6 cm specimen of color zoned fluorite from the Cacilia mine in Germany.

A 7 cm specimen of color zoned fluorite from the Erna mine in Germany

Like Christian Rewitzer Spanish dealer Luis Miguel Burillo also has a very well organized display. He had some exceptional specimens from Panasqueira, Portugal of apatite and fluorite. I made a modest selection and wished I had more cash to get a lot more... alas...

An exceptional 10.5 cm specimen of blue apatite with a large siderite crystal.

Jesse Fisher approached me with the idea of purchasing a 19 pc lot of elbalite from Stak Nala, Pakistan. This is an old and well known locality that has produced specimens off and on for years. What I found appealing about these was the association with quartz that many had. These all need to be cleaned and trimmed which will be tended to first thing after I get to Reno. While cleaning these I found a very rare crystal of reddish microlite on one of them.

A small sample of the specimens from this new find.

A before and after cleaning. Elbaite with quartz, microcline and albite.

Prior to the show I had made arrangements to meet with a few collectors who were looking to sell specimens. I was quite pleased to find a number of specimens to pruchase from them. Below are two of over a dozen specimens I purchased from private collectors.

A sharp 2 cm crystal of ilmenite from Aamdal, Froland, Aust-Agder, Norway.

A 2.5 cm specimen with crystals of manganpyrosmalite from Sweden.

Steve Ulatowski, of New Era Gems, came up with some more of these exceptionally well crystallized golds from Serra de Caldeirao, Mato Grosso, Brazil. Recall that I bought some from him in Denver. He had a dozen specimens and I cherry picked him for the three best in terms of crystallization.

Two of the gold specimens I bought from Steve.

I saw a few other interesting displayed items. One was a large selection of sliced liddicoatite specimens. The dealer asked that I not post them to web so please don't tell him okay? Thanks! Ronna also saw a large T-Rex skull that had been gold plated. Neat stuff!

Seen in Hall A5 - a gold plated T-Rex skull.

Seen in Hall A6 - a set of gorgeous liddicoatite slices.

We had our last meal in the Ratskeller on Marienplatz. I have a deep love of good sauerkraut with German sausages. Together with a pilsner beer I found myself in culinary heaven!

That sauerkraut is everybit as good as it looks! The beautifully lit entrance to the Ratskeller. Ah... Munich...

We had flights from Munich to Reno with two stops. One in Washington D.C. and San Francisco. Ronna saw these for sale at Dulles Airport... sign of the times I guess...

A Hillary Clinton nutcracker. American politics...

We had a good time in Munich and I spent more money than I have in several years. I would also like to thank the Keilmann family for their organization skills. The Munich show is easily the largest single mineral event in the world. It is impossible to take it all in in the 3 days the show runs. I did my best and my little phone pedometer clocked four days with close to 8 miles! It was a very good show in my opinion and I fully intend to return here again next year.

Cheers!

Past Shows & Reports
PLEASE NOTE: The minerals that were offered on these pages are all sold

1999 Munich Show	2000 Sainte Marie Show Munich Show	2001 Sainte Marie Show Munich Show	2002 Tucson Show Sainte Marie Show Denver Show Munich Show
2003 Tucson Show Sainte Marie Show East Coast Show Denver Show Munich Show	2004 Tucson Show West Coast Show East Coast Show Denver Show Munich Show	2005 Tucson Show West Coast Show East Coast Show Denver Show Munich Show	2006 Tucson Show Bologna Show Sainte Marie Show East Coast Show Munich Show
2007 Tucson Show Dallas Show East Coast Show Denver Show Munich Show	2008 Tucson Show West Coast Show East Coast Show Denver Show Munich Show	2009 Tucson Show West Coast Show East Coast Show Denver Show Munich Show	2010 Tucson Show San Francisco Show East Coast Show Denver Show Munich Show
2011 Tucson Show San Francisco Show East Coast Show Denver Show Munich Show	2012 Tucson Show West Coast Show East Coast Show Denver Show Munich Show	2013 Tucson Show Sainte Marie Show Crystal Days (Poland) East Coast Show Munich Show	2014 Tucson Show Denver Show Munich Show
2015 Tucson Show East Coast Show Denver Show Munich Show	2016 Tucson Show East Coast Show Denver Show

Join the mailing list for Trinity Mineral Co. and
trinityminerals.Com