FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

Roger Warin · Joined: 23 Jan 2013 Posts: 1233

Hi Peter,
I agree with you. This was my 30th visit to the Munich Show. Recent years have seen a change with price inflation. This is unfortunate because a bubble is always possible. But on the other hand, these rare minerals will always be exceptional. Everything will depend on the public interest in the mineral world.
As for gold, it has a fascination that reason cannot explain. Perhaps centuries have included this gene in our DNA.
But if I went so often see this temple Munich, is to see the summits that can reach small samples we collect. The macrophotography can also fill the gap of dimensions.
And Munich also has very affordable stands. Much dealers have more sense.
Roger.

Roger Warin · Joined: 23 Jan 2013 Posts: 1233

Hi Gerhard,
Dr. Olaf Medenbach is a great specialist of this topic.
In addition, the perfect instruments remain visible in Bochum.
The impression that emerges from this exceptional collection is the clear beauty of instruments that seem magical to the public. A research atmosphere is felt in this space.
The glorious period of these instruments date from the years 1890 – 1920.
Too bad the public does not rush a lot to admire these goniometers and other refractometers. It seems that we can only love what we know and understand.
Roger.

Jordi Fabre

Barcelona 01/11/2013

After all these images of rocks and instruments and before to publish the final conclusions I'm adding some images of people that could help to make more human this thread! ;-)

Jesse Fisher · Joined: 18 Mar 2009 Posts: 639 Location: San Francisco

One of the things I like about Munich is that, along with having one of the best mineral shows in the world, it is also just a very nice place to visit. With the show normally being late in October one can never count on having good weather. The show dates were early this year so we decided to gamble on some good weather and arrived on the Saturday before the show, giving us a few days to play tourist. The weather turned out to be better than one could hope for and we managed to see a lot of the city before getting totally involved in the show.

The show itself was as impressive and overwhelming as ever, despite the fact that there were few new finds of minerals to be seen. The gold display, though not high on our collecting interests was quite well done, and the special Alpine Strahlers area is always fun as one can see what has been found during the past summer. Also of interest were the large number of tourmaline specimens from the Malkhan pegmatites present, scattered amongst a number of dealers. One of the few new things I saw was a small but nice lot of new fluorites from Panasquiera, perhaps some of the best fluorites I've seen from the mine. Below is a random selection of photos from around Munich and at the show, along with a few fluorites acquired for our collection.

Cheers!

Roger Warin · Joined: 23 Jan 2013 Posts: 1233

Some other pics from Munich 2013.
Roger.

Roger Warin · Joined: 23 Jan 2013 Posts: 1233

Wavelength of time of the "Mineralientage Muenchen".
These are all pictures taken from 1964 until today. A beautiful memory.
Starting in 1964 when the show was very modest ...
This is organizers expression of gratitude to the exhibitors.
Roger.

Jordi Fabre · Posted: Nov 01, 2013 17:17 Post subject: Re: Munich Show (Mineralientage) 2013

Great historic photos Roger!

By chance do you have the same (or other) photos, but individual?

Jordi Fabre

Barcelona 02/11/2013

As I do every year, here you have my notes of my vision of this edition of the Mineralientage 2013, but unlike other years, instead a list of novelties, what I will do is try to do is develop one thought that Peter Lickberg told me while he was recording the edition of "What's Hot in Munich 2013" with Bryan Swoboda. Peter said that we are living in a "Golden Age" of mineral collecting and as this may sound strange at the moment because many people, given the apparent lack of novelties which occur in the Fairs, say that in fact we are living in a kind of "Ice Age" instead a "Golden Age". I wanted to give my own opinion about this subject.

It is true that at Munich there were not major novelties (although many small finds like the Realgars on Calcite from Buismas Mine, the Wurtzites with Jordanite from Greece, a new find of German Hydroboracites, the peruvian Clinoatacamites and Axinites, the large single crystals of Alabandite from Tanzania... ) and that the same has been happening for quite a few years at the big shows, but I do not agree that it means a kind of glaciation of the collecting. Several personalities like Wendell Wilson/Tom Moore/Mineralogical Record or Peter Lickberg, several Museum curators and many mineral collectors and dealers that I have talked to, think that after the flood of magnificent specimens that was caused by the landing in the world of minerals from a number of “new” nations such as the former FSU, China, Tanzania, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran ... it was impossible to believe that this boom could continue and it is therefore logical that now we feel a little bit less excited during Fairs, but that this not mean that there is very little new, but that we had so many new things in a few years that it is impossible to live that excitement again. To this I add that unlike the years before the advent of these new countries, now no countries or mines steadily give a material that is nice, colorful and cheap, as during the time there were the seemingly inexhaustible Dioptases from Tsumeb, the Adamites and the Hemimorphites from the Ojuela Mine, or even the Spanish Fluorite, and that it can give a sense of scarcity, but that feeling is not a problem for the collectors but rather for the dealers ;-)

My thoughts are in line with those of Wendell and Peter, just look at the magnificent Tom Moore chronicles regularly appearing in the What's New of the MR or see the online versions of: What's New in the Mineral World? to realize that although the sensations may be those of a kind of scarcity, with time, patience and a good eye the amount of new material that continually appears in the shows is very significant.

Modern methods for mining mean that those times of plenty in which hundreds of beautiful and cheap crystallized specimens came to the shows are over, and probably will never return, but that does not mean that there is no news during the shows but that we should have a different mindset than before when we look for them, find them and enjoy them.

Until the next Mineralientage, good hunting!

Byron Anderson · Joined: 26 Jan 2013 Posts: 32 Location: Shingle Springs

Do the printed catalogs from the show include photos of the gold specimens shown here on FMF? And if so are captions included with the photos that include local, size, weight, etc? I'm thinking of buying one of the catalogs (if still available?), but I will probably pass if the specimens are not well documented.