Welcome to the 2001 Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show!
 
 

 
June 21st - Day 4

This was the first day of the show (officially) and just about all of the dealers were set up.  A few were still busy throwing things together but for the most part it was "Sheeow Thyme".   I got to the show a bit later than I expected (10:30 am) but went to pay the bills for the specimens I had reserved the day before.   Before getting too far I ran into Andy Seibel who lives in Tehachapi, California.   He was traveling with his uncle from Germany whose name I can not recall and a friend of his named Jerry.  We sxchanged our hellos and set off in pursuit of the treasures that were "out there".    I then went on and picked up the batch of new carrollites from the Gobins, a couple of very nice Chamonix fluorite specimens from DuBois and specimens from Francois Lietard's stock of blue spinels, new blue topaz specimens and a few others.

Here's Francois (seated behind the booth) and one of the blue spinel specimens he's offering.
They are much bluer thean the picture indicates.
 
 

Francois always has some outstanding specimens of vanadinite and these are two examples.
Each with one crystal in excess of 3.5 cm across! These are among the best I have seen here at the show.
 

Francois also always seems to come up with some odd novelties.  This is a tabular aquamarine crystal with a few embedded garnet crystals.
Instead of covering over the garnets the additional growth of the beryl produced tubes in the outline form of the granets!  Quite odd!
 

Immediately to the corner of Francois' booth was this rather artful and colorful array of minerals persented by Barras-Gautier.

The Theatre is a very popular place with a steady flow of traffic in the show room and the steps are used by almost everyone
as a place to meet, relax, or enjoy a snack in the shade.  People are always sitting there from the start to the end of the show.
One thing about the Theatre though is that the large number of lights generates a lot of heat towards the end of the day.

After the Theatre I ventured back out into the world and found this fellow who's name was not listed with a table of great Chinese material - mostly fluorites and beryls and shceelite specimens.  All of the material was of very good quality.   I scooped up some very attractive fluorite specimens and moved on.  Interestingly, for me at least, was that he was set up right next to a Giant Sequoia.  These trees are native to the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, live for several thousand years and grow into the largest living things on earth.  The one behind this guy is a "pup" at just 1.5 meters in diameter...

Here's a picture of some of his fluorites and he himself

Word got out that someone from the United States was looking for pink fluorite from Chamonix and this fellow, Eddie Bosonetto, from Lyon, France which is only 90 minutes by car from Chamonix, presented his stash of specimens.  I left his setup with nine new additional matrix specimens of pink fluorite with and without smoky quartz.  He also had a large number of excellent smoky quartz specimens from the Chamonix area which he tried to get me to bite on but my sights were focused on pink only.

A stroll down the middle of one of the streets

Here's Eddie who was set up on the street not far from the Theatre.

One of the new "hot" items at the show are some rather incredible specimens of Chevkinite-Ce from a new find made in Pakistan.  Dudley Bluwat of Mountain Minerals had some of these at the Tucson Show a couple months ago that are quite small in comparison to these new large and well formed specimens.   Several dealers including Francois Lietard and Jordi Fabre had some of these but the competition with the museums was/is intense as these are the best examples ever offered of this exceptionally rare thorium bearing species.   After "turning over a few rocks" here at the show it turns out the Righi Umberto of France was the responsible for bringing essentially all of the fine specimens of this great find to the Saint-Marie Show.  The material at the show here is a quantum leap up in terms of quality for this species from Tucson and those were a gigantic leap forward from the previously known specimens.  Up to that time all chevkinite specimens have consisted of dull earthy coatings or black amorphous clumps.  Nothing much to get worked up over except for species collectors.   These represent a true museum grade find for the collecting world. At this juncture of the show I believe that the Chevkinte-Ce specimens are the best new find being offered at the 2001 Sainte Marie Show.

Things happen fast at shows - especially as it relates to exciting new finds and spanish dealer Jordi Fabre, who always has his ear to the ground, came up with five specimens near the end of the day.   I was at his booth making arrangements to have dinner for Colleen and I with him and his two assistants Julia and Jordi Gil when he showed these to me.  These were without question among the best five specimens at the show of this new find.   One in particular is quite likely among the world's best of the species.  I feel very fortunate to have been at the right place at the right time (around 6 pm) to have been able to obtain what are probably among the very best of this rare species.   I will have pictures of some of these for tomorrow's show report.

Near the end of the day I also ran into Keith Hayes who prepares the show reports for us for the Virtual Show that several of us work to present from Denver and Tucson.   The image below is what Jet Lag looks like in living (?) color...

This is what running around for 12 hours a day for 4 days looking for rocks wiil do to you....
Claude Pellison - webmaster for the Saint-Marie Show's website kindly took this shot of me in the Theatre...
Note the cool looking kid to my left!

This was my last view of the show for the day.  Colleen came by moments
after this shot was taken and we went back to Lapoutroie.

Later that evening Colleen and I met up with Jordi and his crew for supper at the Bellevue hotel located at the col
(summit) overlooking Saint-Marie.  The food was EXCELLENT and Jordi recommended all the right dishes as he
did last year.  I gotta tell you that frog legs prepared in the Alsace way are excellent!

Click here to see the 2000 Saint-Marie aux Mines show report The Official Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show Website