Welcome to the 2002 Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show!
 
 

 
June 26th

Well, another warm and humid day here in France.   I am wearing the same pants and tee shirt for the 5th straight day.  Later today I am going to have to drive to Strasbourg to retrieve my long lost but not forgotten suit case with the rest of my clothes and camera...

My first stop of the day was at the Les Bagenelles Hotel where the Gobin brothers - Christophe and Brice are staying.  They had some new specimens of brochantite and velvety malachite from the Kabolela Mine in Katanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that are dang near heart stopping and also some new specimens of cuprosklodowskite from the long closed Musonoi Mine also in Katanga.   (I will add some pictures of these minerals in a day or so as I got my camera back.  More about that later in this installment.) The Musonoi mine has been closed for over 40 years but in the past two years some industrious souls have been moving A LOT of dump material to get to the lower reaches which have been covered for well over 50 years.  In this material it is possible to find some very good specimens of such species as cuprosklodowskite and torbernite.   I visited with them for about an hour and made selections of the new brochantites, malachites and  cuprosklodowskites then headed to the show.  I know I am asking for trouble with the radioactive minerals as last year after the Munich Show I was detained for several hours while I tried and ultimately did convince the people at the customs office in the San Francisco office that I was not some sort of terrorist trying to smuggle weapons grade uranium into the United States...  Might as well add an element of intrigue to the trip...

They also had some new specimens of Carrollite that are again as good as anyone as ever seen though I did not pick up any for my website offers later on.

Two of the several dozen specimens of brochantite that were available from Gobin.

Specimen of one of the new cuprosklodowskites.

One of the several dozen specimens of velvet malachite that were available.
 
 

Just two of the dozens of very fine single crystals of carrollite that were available.

Parking is not so easy this year at the show.  There are MANY more people than in recent years which is good for the show organizers and local economy but it does create real issues when it comes to finding a place to dump the car and then get to the show area.  What's great about the Sainte Marie show, however, is that the atmosphere is not tense - most people are moving about at a leisurely pace stopping into any of the 200 or so tents and seeing what there is to see and moving on.   Today was also the last day before the show technically starts so it was also a day to check in and see what people were unwrapping.  The real frenzy begins tomorrow with the start of the show.

I focused on the Theater first.  This is where the better material is generally displayed (not all by any means however).  (I should also pas along that when the weather is hot the Theater follows suit.  It gets pretty toasty in there with all of the halogen lights on.)   I saw French dealer Righi Umberto setting up his main booth so I swung by and found some new specimens of demantoid from near Khost, Afghanistan and also some of the same indicolite tourmalines from Chamachu, Pakistan that I found in Francois Lietard's stock at his home in Saint Martin en Haut.   Also seen were a very large hoard of pentagonite specimens from India.  These were available for $5 to $10 each and there were a LOT of them at this one dealer's booth.  I can not recall his name but I know Jeff Scovil photographed a few of them for the Mineralogical Record.   Jordi Fabre also had a new find of bismuthenite from Bolivia as well as several dozen specimens of the Chinese Kermesite.  (see my notes elsewhere on the kermesites.)
 
 

Here are several 10+ cm crystal groups and singles.

Outside in the heat I swung by the tent of Alain Martaud who has a lot of new material from the Behier collection that he is dispersing.  It was mostly old rarities.  I made a few selections and then moved "deeper" into his tent.  He also had some fluorite specimens from Fonsante in Var, France of a very deep inky blue color.  Alan explained to me that this color was restricted to a 20 cm thick seam that was only 1.5 meters in length.  I was fortunate to obtain what Alan said was one of the five best specimens from this find.  The other four are already placed in collections and a museum. I found a half dozen other pieces and scurried on into the heat.

This is the finest of the French fluorite specimens that Alain had available.
An interesting note is that in direct sun the specimen is dark inky blue.
Under the halogen light in my hotel room it displays a strong violet hue.
When backlit the violet interior is readily visible.  Obviously this is a
very fluorescent find of fluorite.

Not far from Alan I found Chinese dealer Jinshi Liu from the Southwest China Mineral Museum setting up.  He had a very nice specimen of scheelite associated with a bright pink apatite crystal which I snagged.

One thing I am noticing here is that the quantity of roselite from Morocco has encountered a population explosion!!  There are literally thousands of specimens of this mineral available here.  Most are not too good in quality but there are many that are outstanding.  In the moment they are readily obtainable.   Several dealers are also claiming that they have wendwilsonite but Francois Lietard is the only dealer who has showed me the analysis to support the claim.  Wendwilsonite and roselite are indistinguishable by site.  Without an xray and/or chemical analysis to determine the precise magnesium/calcium ratios specimens should be labeled as roselite which is generally accepted.

Also out in the tent world I visited Marcus Grossman and found some fine new specimens of dendritic native silver on native arsenic from the old locality at Pohla, Saxony, Germany.  He says that the locale has been recently and they are hopeful that many new specimens will be available at the Munich Show later this year.   I will post some pictures later this week here.

Herring bone dendritic silver on native arsenic.

A comment here: folks - the US advantage with currencies is over for the time being.  Needless to say the latest news from the states regarding World Com and the Stock market are big news here.   I am finding that specimens are about 25%-40% more expensive than last year due to the shrinking value of the US Dollar versus the European Euro.   Things are cyclic in life and for the moment the "Good old days" are past for the many (35-40 or so) people here from the United States.   Also, the Chinese material is starting to rocket out of site price wise.   Dealers are reporting that the Chinese are using the web as a way to see what the end prices for their material is and are charging crazy money for specimens.  This, to me, is all the more reason for dealers to be very cautious about the way they obtain material and also market it to ensure that the collectors are not gouged and that they pay the true prices for specimens. This is a very interesting time as the Internet is finally starting to drastically affect the way marketing of minerals is happening from the source it would seem.

As the day wore on I knew I had to head on over to Strasbourg to retrieve my wayward luggage.  I was successful in getting it finally.  The route of my luggage to me was the following:  San Francisco to Munich to Frankfurt back to San Francisco to Paris back to San Francisco and then to Strasbourg.  I wonder if I can claim frequent flier miles for the trip that my bag made?  Anyway, I got it back and will be shooting pictures tomorrow.  I have had to spend a lot of time on the phone and doing other things related to the retrieval of the bag instead of focusing on the report and mineral acquisition.  Like I said earlier... the glamorous life of a mineral dealer... c'est la vie.

More tomorrow!

John

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