FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Jordi Fabre]

Friday 9 February 2007

Today is my last day in Tucson! Tomorrow I will fly back to Spain leaving Parés and the other helpers here to close up and prepare the specimens for shipping. So, I will have no more opportunity to write a general vision of this past Tucson 2007. I will do so over the next days when I am back in Barcelona.
In the meantime I can offer a choice of some of the nicer specimens exhibited in the show cases of the Main Show. A fabulous Chalcocite from Bristol, Connecticut, (Jack Halpern collection), a more than good Brazilian rose Quartz, (Mark Weil collection), extremely clean Australian Rhodonites (Australian minerals were the theme this year), the incredible Pakistan Aquamarine that we mentioned yesterday (Gene Meieran), a very nice Copper covered by Cuprite from Bisbee, Arizona, (Los Angeles County Museum) and a huge and esthetic Brazilian Elbaite on Quartz.

More to come soon from Barcelona!

[Jordi Fabre]

Bye bye Tucson!

[Jordi Fabre]

Thursday 15 February 2007

Just returned to Barcelona and I have an enormous amount of work to do here! As you can see from the photo our table is full of specimens waiting to be shipped. It is much more work than I expected, so I should take care of them and wait until next month to complete my overview and general conclusions of the Tucson Show 2007.

As an appetizer here are some more photos of the Main Show. The first two show the hall on set-up day (Wednesday) and the same hall on Thursday when the Show started - big difference! In the second image, walking toward the camera, we see the Chicago collector Tom Hall.

In the last years the Main Show has become more and more a kind of social event and it supply only a limited amount of new material compared to the hotels, as it occurs at the far end of the two weeks (+) that the whole Tucson mineral madness lasts. By then, most of the deals, novelties and transactions are done. Nevertheless, from time to time there is still something there to excite customers and dealers. In this case Evan Jones, son of the well-known Bob Jones, displayed at the Main Show his recent purchase: the collection of Russell Jones. As the photo shows, a rush concentrated a lot of people around his booth. We can recognize John Veevaert (yellow t-shirt), Steve Perry (white t-shirt), and Dan Weinrich (rose t-shirt), as well as Evan Jones inside his booth (long hair).

More to come next month (the conclusion)

[Jordi Fabre]

Tuesday 20 March 2007

Before giving my final thoughts about the show I cannot resist the chance to tell you a short story, about one of the more unusual things we saw while we were there.

Some good Colombian friends of mine came to our room to show me a superb Emerald on matrix. It was marvelous and very transparent, but there was a large crack in the middle of the Calcite matrix, which made it impossible to sell. As a specimen it was really superb, so before saying a definite ‘no’ I suggested a very risky act to the sellers: I would try and break the matrix with my hands. If it broke well I would buy it at their asking price, but if the result was not good they would keep it and I would not pay a penny. Bravely, my Colombian friends accepted the challenge. In the two photos you can see the moments when the specimen in my hands split into two. You can also see, near my hands, the Colombians’ hands trying to catch any fragments that fell off.
So what was the result? It split perfectly and from it we got a fantastic miniature specimen. So the Colombians (and I) were very happy, as was John S. White, who is now the proud owner of this little wonder.

So, contrary to the saying, not everything that can end badly does end badly, or at least not during Tucson 2007.

On the last day of the show I had the great pleasure of a visit from the Nelsons: Dick and Carmen. She is Spanish and he is North American. They had already visited me in Barcelona a few years ago and we all had good memories of the visit. Dick took a photo of Carmen and me; you can see us in my room with the high quality specimen case behind us.

In the last photo you can see what happened at the Hotel InnSuites at the end of the show. The dealers had left, or were just about to do so, the hotel had emptied of all those colorful things that had made it so different over the previous three weeks. Tucson life is getting back to normal and, in the middle of February, a game of volleyball is underway on a patio that was until a few hours before the center of the mineralogical world.

[Jordi Fabre]

So this is the end. I will just give you a summary of what I saw.

Overall I feel that the Tucson Show is just getting too big. In some ways that is not bad, as it gives us a chance to see, buy and enjoy a huge quantity of good minerals. But then again I feel that a visitor who is not an expert, or is not familiar with the abundance of this show would find this all too much and might even just get confused by the large numbers of dealers, shows, and minerals that they would visit.
People talked about this as well as about the prices, which are very high for good specimens. The first concern should get better next year, as the Clarion Hotel will cease to act as a hotel for mineral dealers. Instead that Quality Inn will take over its role, so the show for collector quality minerals will be centered on three hotels: the InnSuites with the largest number of dealers, and with the most renowned ones; the Quality Inn with dealers selling a wide variety of material; and the Westward Look with the dealers of the highest priced material. Of course, there will still be the Main Show but, as we have said before, given that this occurs after all the other shows, the Main Show is almost a social event and not really the place to get the most desirable collection quality minerals.

Another thing is the prices, which for a while have been the main complaint of the visitors to the show. Sadly many mines have closed and there are few novelties on the market. This has inevitably made the prices of the most desirable specimens rise. That said the prices for ‘moderate quality’ material are actually falling. I think this is because the demands of collectors have gradually increased and are now far higher than they used to be, so there are very few specimens that meet these criteria and can be considered to be great specimens. When they are available the price is extremely high, and when they do not meet the criteria the contrary happens and the prices fall.
This is just how it is and there is little we can do to change it. However, I feel that at the moment there are a significant number of specimens out there that do not really merit being considered to be ‘great specimens’, but that are being sold for very high prices. This produces some undesirable effects: some degree of confusion in the market and the fact that as over time these seem to keep reappearing in different hands some minerals are just never sold, they just do the rounds of the dealers.

See you during Tucson 2008!

Jordi