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Tucson 2009 Report 4 I t is time for the Westward Look Show. I drove up for set up day and saw a few dealers who had their rooms open which was not many.
Cal Graeber and Leonard
Himes were open and it is always a treat to see what
they have brought. Check out the photos below!
One of the
finest specimens of fluorite in Cal's hands ever
recovered from the Rogerley Mine in England... Period!
A stunning collection of stalactitic azurite and malachite from the Morenci Mine in
Arizona.
An eye popping large cabinet specimen of elbaite from Paprok,
Afghanistan.
While wandering around I ran
into Evan Jones. Evan showed some remarkable specimens of malachite after azurite
from the productive Milpillas mine in Mexico
and also a
huge plate of azurite from Bisbee.
Evan with a large chunk of Bisbee in his
hands.
It never fails that my Reno, Nevada buddy Scott
Werschky has some interesting things to display. His and Alan Day's access
to gold from Nevada is unrivaled. Scott had two specimens of Olinghouse
gold that were
the finest I have ever seen.
This is a 35 cm
specimen with a 25 cm zone of gold in calcite from the Olinghouse
mine.
A close up of the specimen
above.
One more close
up.
Scott
also had some interesting specimens of fluorite from the Erongo Moutains
in Namibia. When has anyone ever seen what looks like a scepter fluorite???
Scott obtained the entire lot of fluorite from another dealer. The
entire pocket contained about 120 of these remarkably uniform sized
specimens. All are floaters of etched fluorite with an octahedral cap on a
small greenish hued stem. Scott allowed me to pick from the
entire group. I selected for uniformity and symmetry. (I
received a note from Dr. Bruce Cairncross regarding these specimens
on February 8th that I think is important to add here:
"They're actually not
scepters ……. They are the corroded remnants of octahedrons that have been
etched away leaving a stalk of fluorite with the residual corner of the
original crystal mimicking a sceptre. And as a strange coincidence, John
White has an article on this exact phenomenon in one of the latest Rocks
& Minerals issues. He features USA fluorites that show this structure,
similar to the Erongo ones."
One of the finest in the lot - a 2.4 cm specimen of
fluorite.
There will be more to
talk about from the Westward Look in the next
report.
But
before I forget, Dudley Blauwet showed me a small lot of very odd
indicolite specimens from Kokcha Valley, Badakhshan, Afghanistan. He
obtained these on his most recent trip to Pakistan (I am still in awe of
Dudley who is fearless in his travels. Given the political state of that
part of the world and the rampant kidnappings which are happening there he
still goes. Huevos man. Huevos!) These specimens have deep indigo
blue colored, tabular crystals set in a matrix of a micaceous
mineral. The crystals are doubly terminated with pyramidal
forms.
Looking down on a 1.5 cm
crystal of deep blue
indicolite. Note the small triangular pinacoid just above the center of the
crystal.
I will get back
up to the Westward Look show later this weekend and get
more info
on what is
up there for the next report.
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