For the second time in my rock hounding life, I went to the Tucson Gem, Mineral and Fossil Showcase this year. Showcases are probably a more apt description. There are five distinct shows at different locations for different durations that take place beginning mid-January and run through mid-February.
If you could subtract all of the people from all of the venues around town, you would be left with a wondrous display of rocks and minerals that the term “eye candy” does not begin to describe.
Some are small and delicate pieces of worked emeralds wrapped in silver and fashioned into jewelry and displayed under lock and key. Some are huge slabs of marble breccia cut and then polished smooth, glassy, and inviting to the touch, that could easily serve as a coffee table.
Then there is the amethyst that I am so thrilled to find when I am hounding, which can be measured in centimeters. Here there are geodes, mounted on sturdy iron bars, split in half and splayed open to resemble amethyst butterfly wings—if butterflies ever grew to four-foot lengths.
I once spent a morning collecting at Washington Camp, high up in the Patagonia Mountains, below the pass on Duquesne Road. I was fascinated by the tiny cubes of iron sulfide—pyrite—that I was finding there. After a while, I had enough to fill an entire matchbox.
At the show I see another example of iron sulfide, the same chemical composition, but with a different crystal structure, called marasite. This cluster of crystals measures 18x12x10 inches and is heavy enough to command its very own iron bar display system.
So much for my matchbox collection.
As beautiful and awe-inspiring as the rocks are, the experience is made even more fascinating by the people who bring it all together: the vendors of vanadium, the merchants of manganite and the salesmen and saleswomen of selenite. Lots of selenite.
At a point in history where we seem intent on settling our differences and solving our problems through the miracles of saltpeter, ammonium nitrate and enriched U-235, all sorts of people come to Tucson to hawk their wares so that minerals might give some aesthetic pleasure.
It is from around the world that they come to tell the story of their rocks, and, hopefully, sell some.
At Gem Avenue, I talk with Haroon Sait, from Charlotte, North Carolina. He has been coming here as a buyer for ten years and as a seller for four. Haroon is originally from India, as is most of the stock in his store.
Josh Colbaugh is part of a father-and-son team where he is the fourth-generation purveyor of material at Kingman Turquoise in northwest Arizona. He does two Tucson shows a year as well as the Rodeo Shows in Las Vegas. He is standing alongside bins of turquoise priced at $500 per pound. He smiles, slightly, when I comment that there must be at least $500,000 worth of rocks at his booth. There are, in fact, millions of dollars here. Josh tells me that Europeans prefer clear turquoise and that Americans like it mixed with a matrix.
Noor, of Noor Gems, is here for his first show. He has tables full of attractive blue lapis. The lapis lazuli that was inlaid on the magnificent gold funerary mask that King Tutankhamun wore for his trip to the after-world may well have come from Noor’s hometown of Badakhshan, Afghanistan, where mining of the mineral began 7,000 years ago. The lapis lazuli mined there reached Egypt around 3,000 BCE.
Noor says that since the Taliban took over there has been no further digging at the family mine but that two emerald mines in Panjshir are now working. It takes two months and many export/import licenses to get the stones into the U.S.
When I am finally ready to leave, I feel as if I have kept a promise I made to myself. Last year I bought a flat—a 10″x15″ cardboard box—that contained nine mineral specimens. In it were things like calcite, green apophyllite, amethyst, stilbite and heulandite, all from Maharashtra, India. They came cushioned in sticky foam, resting on a bed of newspaper. The paper was printed in Hindi, with ads and photos similar to what you might find in an American daily. Because that flat has sat, unmolested, under my dresser for the past year, I vowed not to buy any rocks from the show this year.
Near the show’s exit is Hussein. He and his wife are tending their business, Aflica Minerals. They have lots of something he calls geo-calcite from Morocco. Hussein tells me that they have brought 20,000 kilos to the show.
There is an astonishingly white geode cut open in one of their flats. I buy the single geode. It comes wrapped in a newspaper that is printed in Arabic. It too has ads and photos similar to what can be found in any Western daily.
It is a small victory but this year I have kept my purchases to $5.00.
Now if only I could find a place to display this rock.
Keith Krizan can be contacted at therealkbkkbk@gmail.com