FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[vic rzonca]

The show coverage on this site is fantastic. Here are my two cents.

[Peter Van Hout]

Thank you Matt, Jordi and all the others for giving us here in Europe an idea of what the Tucson show must be to experience it in real.
What I saw on the pics looked most of the time really great but what I saw on the price tags of most of the pieces looks not realistic anymore, and frightens my to.

Peter

[John S. White]

I agree that the prices have climbed to unrealistic heights just since last year. It seems that most of the major dealers have all gotten together and decided to add more zeros to last year's prices, which were already extreme. As Jordi has written, even mediocre pieces now have prices that we would expect to see only on exceptional ones, and there were lots and lots of mediocre pieces with unbelievable prices. It is difficult to believe that many dealers sold many pieces at these prices. I call them "fantasy prices." The discounts to knowledgeable buyers who would never pay these fantasy prices must have been major, while novice buyers may have paid full price. Will they one day wake up and be so upset that they will never buy again? One has to believe this will be the case.

[Joaquin Montoro]

I totally agree with you John.

[vic rzonca]

To John's comment about "fantasy prices", it's common to ask if this price is "keystone", meaning the sale price is half the marked price. Perhaps as customers we can begin asking "Is this the fantasy price?", and go on from there?

[Alishad]

Excellent, superb and magnificent work. I love it.

[Gail]

Oh look at this one of Vic...our resident crack parking emperor.

[Matt_Zukowski]

Next are two pictures of the Hoppel Collection case and eight picts from a case I can't identify.

[Matt_Zukowski]

Two more picts of the poster rock and five picts from the Tellus case.

[Matt_Zukowski]

I did not do a good job of documenting who presented each case - sorry - so what follows is:
* Five picts from a case with what look like are typed labels.
* Six picts from the Kielbaso Case.

[Matt_Zukowski]

* Three picts of the Alain Martaud case.
* Four picts from the UA case.
* Three picts from the Arizona Historical Society case (isn't it great that a state historical society has a mineral collection).
* The picts from a case i can't identify.

[Matt_Zukowski]

* Five picts from the thumbnail case. The last two Tucsons have taught me that thumbnails can be very cool, aesthetic, and informative. In this year's thumbnail displays was a Gunnel collection with labeled faces -very cool!
*Six picts of fluorite specimens from Socorro Co, NM. I did not know that the Blanchard Mine produced so many different colors and styles of fluorite!

[Matt_Zukowski]

My last set of pictures includes:
*five pictures from the Harvard case.
*Only one pict of the Spirifer case.

FYI - all my picts this year were taken with an i phone 4S and the camera app called Camera Awesome. I use Camera Awesome because it adds digital stabilization and more control over the focus point.

I realize now that there were probably large parts of the main show that i just didn't get to this year. With this comment i am amplifying what many others have said about Tucson: There is so much of it that you can't see everything worthwhile, so just relax and see what you can.

[John S. White]

To return to the subject of mineral prices at this year's show, I am reminded of a conversation I had with a dealer many years ago. I was told that if they set prices at double their cost they could not stay in business. Fair enough. But 10 or more times their cost? This seems excessive and very definitely not good for the hobby. How can we expect to attract new collectors when they look at these prices and realize that there is no future for them in the hobby when anything that is at all desirable is not affordable?

[Jordi Fabre]