My first stop was at the Executive Inn. This show seems to be growing from its rebirth of a few years ago.  There were not many dealers set up but I did find Eric Cantayre open in the main wing.  He had some intense red rhodonite specimens from Conselheiro Lafaiete, Minas Gerais, Brazil.  I was in Brazil this past July and was openly depressed when I had a chance to see some rhodonite with Ze Estrada.  He had barrels of the stuff and it was 99.999% road fill in terms of quality.  Anyway, my eyes popped when I saw these and rapidly started to accumulate a pile of them. 
 
 

There wasn't much else to see at this point at the Executive Inn so I went to the Inn Suites. I ran into Isaias Casanova initially and he tipped me off on some minerals John Cornish was offering.  John is offering specimens from the Paul Harter collection and some of his own stock as well as his usual array of heulandite and mordenite from the Rat's Nest mine in Custer Co., Idaho.

Here's John standing in front of his Heulandite case.  These are quite reasonably priced and outstanding in quality.

An example of the heulandite and mordenite. 
 

A 9 cm specimen of manganocalcite with a 1.5 cm crystal of 
fluorite from Dal' Negorsk, Russia also from the Harter Collection.

Other dealers were open also including Spanish dealer Luis Miguel Fernandez Burillo who had some stunning new specimens of bladed rhodonite from the San Martin Mine, Chiurucu, Huanzala, Peru. This is not a new locality but there hasn't been any quantity of good material from there in some time now. There was a crowd around these but I did get some fine pieces. 
 
 

Wendy's Minerals had a new find of calcite frosted with micro crystals of pyrite from Dandan, Guangxi Province, China.  They also had specimen of the rounded pyrite clusters on fluorite from Shao Guan, Guang Dong Province, China. I have only seen these sparingly at the Munich Show up till now.

French dealers Brice and Christophe Gobin, as usual, have some nice new material from the Erongo Mountains in Namibia and also dioptase and associated minerals from the Kaokoveld Mine also in Namibia.
 
 

On the 26th Top Gem had their grand opening at their new digs about 3/4 mile up Oracle from where they have been the past several years.  There is also a group of warehouse storage areas where other dealers such as Clive Queit, Collector's Edge and Lehigh Minerals were set up to move their wholesale material. 

Collector's Edge had a huge supply of material from China.  They are actively engaged in specimen recovery projects in China and they are expected to produce a number of fine specimens for years to come.  That doesn't mean forever.  Remember places like Tsumeb and Cave in Rock where there was a belief that the minerals would never end.  They do eventually and right now Yoagangxian is a modern day classic locality that won't last forever. So I decided to pick up a flat of high quality single pieces of fluorite and scheelite and combinations thereof.
 
 

As I said earlier you always see people you know at these shows and it did not take long for me to run into Marshall Sussman.  Marshall is probably the single largest source of fine Tsumeb material in the United States.  He has a far ranging tentacled reach around the globe as it relates to Tsumeb.   It did not take much convincing for me to hop in the car and make the drive up to Oro Valley, where he and his wife Charlotte now live, and see what there was.  After some vacillation I opted for a collection of Thumbnails and another collection of miniature and small cabinet pieces.  Remember what I said about Yoagangxian earlier on in this installment.  The same thing is going to happen to specimens from that locality that have happened to the specimens from Tsumeb - a sky rocketing in the cost of obtaining good specimens.  Below is a teaser of specimens that will be offered in the very near future.

 More to come in the next few days!