February 1, 2002

The first day of the hotel shows is finally over!  I spent about half the day between both the Executive Inn and the Inn Suites venues.   About 15% of the rooms were open already and many dealers were arriving today to start setting up.

I should start out these reports with some info about my trek down here.  I met up with Alessandro Genazzani in Reno.  I had spent the night there to see comedian Dennis Miller at the Silver Legacy Hotel.  The next day (the 27th) Alessandro arrived and we headed out with the intent of stopping along the way to collect minerals.  We stopped at the Carson City Nugget to have dinner and look at the fabulous gold collection that is on display there.  If you're ever in Carson City this is a must see!

First on the hit list was a trip to the Champion Mine to collect rutile and other interesting species... Forget it. Snow everywhere.  So on down the Owens Valley we went and made it to Kern Knob near Lone Pine to collect Amazonite and aquamarine crystals.   The weather was at least clear there but the mineral collecting was kind of lousy as the place has been creamed over the last 25 years.

So, next stop was on to Dealer John Seibel's home in Tehachapi, California.  There we saw some of the specimens John was brining to Tucson.  That's where I got the pink halite, red beryl and other assorted specimens.  John generously put us up for the night and gave us directions to a place to collect wulfenite near Searles Lake.  It would have worked out ok but for the cold blowing snow... For some reason I thought that winter did not visit the desert regions of California!  What a maroon!  While at John's we learned of the terrible news that Jim Minette of Boron, California had died the day before.  I am sorry to hear of Jim's passing.  He was a good fellow and will be missed.

Next on the agenda was a visit to the Himalaya Mine in San Diego County (with the kind permission of Bill Larson) to rummage through the dumps.  We spent several hours there and found some small tourmalines, orthoclase, lepidolite and other species.  We were quite happy so we left the mine and headed out for Yuma.  What I didn't realize until reaching Yuma was that I had left my checkbook on a rock on the dump.  After a long dark night of the soul Alessandro and I packed up the car and drove back to the Himalaya Mine... 250 miles worth of back... And then after finding it turned around and went on to Tucson going through Yuma again about 7 hours after driving away from it in the morning.  It was ~that~ kind of start to the 2002 Tucson show for me.

Anyway, I am here finally and getting around.

What I saw today was mostly some interesting Chinese minerals.  As stated in earlier shows the material keep getting better and the Tucson Show is no exception.  Many fine fluorite, scheelite, tabular aquas and several rare species like the thallium bearing lorandite are coming to the show in good quality and quantity.  You have to wade through a lot of mediocre material but there is enough good quality to make it worth while.

One thing high on my get list were specimens of the blue apatite from Paraiba, Brazil.  I had one online 2 months ago and have been hammered ever since to get more.  Well, I found only two available in Luis Menezes room. He only brought 2 and no one else has any that I have seen that are not astronomic in price.  These things really are quite rare evidently.

I also came across a very fine lot of Hope's Nose gold specimens - many matrix pieces.  Also, a number of the exceedingly rare, palladium rich variety known as porposite.

As the day progressed I came across some of the new find of poldervaarite made this past fall at the N'Chwaning mine in South Africa.   Paul Botha had these available at the Executive Inn.  These are really quite exceptional for the species!

Tomorrow I will bring my camera to the show for pictures.

No telling what will be available as the show gets closer to opening day.

See you tomorrow,

John