Welcome to the 2002 Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show!
 
 

 
June 27th

Just about everyone was open for business today even though the show "officially" starts tomorrow.

My first stop of the day was in theater where I stopped by to see Jean Francois Astier.  He had several specimens of pink fluorite from Al Hammon, Morocco.   I found two that I thought were interesting and got them for the website.  He also had very many outstanding specimens of various species from Morocco including azurite, anglesite, cerussite, wulfenite and more.  Morocco has the potential to produce an abundance of fabulous minerals for many decades to come and it is apparent that, like the Chinese, they are realizing that minerals handled carefully will fetch a much better price than those that are tossed into a gunny sack and allowed to rattle around.  Below are two of the specimens of the fluorite that I obtained (the colors are not true as my lighting source in my room is an incandescent bulb which casts a heavy yellow tone to the specimens).
 
 

The crystal on the left is very glassy and has a fine phantom in the center.  The specimen on the right has two generations
of fluorite - green cores and light pink rectangular shaped crystals.  Distinctly different from the green core habit.

Also in the Theater I saw this rather peculiar and striking specimen of a 20 cm orthoclase crystal hosting crystals of muscovite, topaz, quartz and an emerald green crystal of fluorite.   It was available for 1000 euros.

The topaz crystal is in the center of the photo on the right.

Also in the Theatre Le Marveilles de Terre had on display some of the best Elmwood Mine fluorite I have seen in a long time!  The piece pictured below is one of the best magenta colored specimens I have ever seen from the Tennessee locality!

This specimen is about 20 cm across and has a calcite set on it.  I don't recall ever seeing this color from Elmwood before.

This specimen is about 9 cm across.  The price for this specimen in
US Dollars would have been about $160 two weeks ago.  Today
it costs $180 since the Euro and Dollar are even...

While in the Theater I took the opportunity to snap a couple of candid shots of well known figures in the mineral business from the United States.  Attached are some tongue in cheek (humorous) captions...
 
 

Here's Dan Weinrich asking Jean Francois Astier if any of these $2 azurites are keystone?  Wait!  Is that a halo of  innocence around Dan's head?... hmm...

In this shot, Sandor Fuss (holding the bottle of water) of The Collector's Edge is about to grab that $5 cavansite as soon as Danny Trinchillo (white T-Shirt) puts it back on the table...

Outside in one of the tents in the Lycee Court Chinese dealer Liu Guanghua of AAA Guanghua Minerals had a couple dozen specimens of apple green fluorite from a new find in China.   These are strikingly similar at first glance to the rich apple green fluorite from the Wise Mine in New Hampshire except that these are large (up to 9 cm across) with good well formed crystals.

This is a small portion of the material the Guanghua had in his tent and one of the specimens I obtained on the right.

I mentioned earlier that Righi Umberto had specimens of a new find of demantoid from Khost, Afghanistan.  I found a Paki dealer - Al-Rahman Gems & Minerals - in the International Mineral Tent who had the largest crystals of these garnets that I have seen here with crystals to about 1.5 cm across.  Below is a shot of one of the pieces I obtained from him.
 
 

This specimen has a brilliant flat lying crystal about 1.5 cm across.

Out on the Rue Osmont in one of the tents I visited Hanspeter Schleite who specializes in cut stones.  He always carries supplies of rough material as well of such species as tourmaline, hauyne and garnet.  He had some new material from Nigeria of bright orange spessartine.   No one is sure exactly where in Nigeria these come from but the best educated guess given the pegmatite origin of spessartine is the Ibadan area.

These are two specimens of the new spessartine garnets from Nigeria. They are each about 1 cm across.

I finally got around to photographing a few of the specimens that I have picked up with my crude set up in my room just give an idea of some of the new material that has shown up here in Sainte Marie.

These are two of the fluorite specimens.  The colors from these photos
UNDERSTATE the true color of these fluorite specimens in direct sunlight!

 
 
 
 
 

This is a specimen of indicolite hosting a single crystal of  quartz and topaz.  It measures about 4.5 cm in height.

This specimen is over 8 across and consists of indicolite with topaz and quartz crystals.  Both pieces were obtained from Francois Lietard.

This is a specimen of indicolite draped in albite.
The crystal is 3.7 cm in length. This specimen
was obtained from Righi Umberto.

In the evening Jordi Fabre and his assistant Julia and I went to dine at a small out of the way place up in the hills above Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines called Auberge du Sobach.  The meal was excellent with salad and beef dish which we all had.  But what was very appealing was the view out the window of the sunset and countryside.  Just beautiful!  Jordi always seems to have the best places pegged for the days here in Sainte-Marie.   Hence, it is always in my best interest to tag along with him come supper time.

More tomorrow!

John

 

Follow the links below to catch up on the latest from Sainte-Marie 2002

June 25th Report	June 26th Report	June 27th Report	June 28th Report	June 29th & 30th
Trinity Mineral Co	Rare Minerals	Mineral Books	Tsumeb	Mineral Shows.com

 

The 2000 Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show Report The 2001 Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show Report The Official Sainte-Marie aux Mines Show Website