FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Jordi Fabre]

Thursday 25 January 2007

Reporting from Tucson, today I started a series of articles which will be more or less daily in which I will try to reflect on what happens in this enormous Show.

In the meantime not too many rooms are open, so we can't say that the show has already started. In the photo you can see our Room #164, on the courtyard of the Hotel InnSuites, still closed as we are working inside preparing everything for the first day. We will open Saturday 27th at 9:30 AM. Until then there is a lot of work to make everything ready.

Here in Tucson the weather is great during the day with plenty of sunshine, although over the last few days it snowed and the nights are very cold, as is typical of desert weather.

More to come...

Jordi

[Jordi Fabre]

Friday 26 January 2007

Slowly, the Hotel rooms becomes open here on the InnSuites as well as on the Hotel Clarion and on the new Hotel Quality Inn, although still many rooms are closed because people is working preparing it, as we do ourselves. In the night, late, the lights are plugged, people is working inside the rooms.

The general atmosphere for now is quiet. After Saturday 27 most people will open and then we could describe what the Show will be this year.

When the rooms are ready with all minerals displayed, it is a pleasure to visit it, but the set up is hard for the dealers. Anyway, when the room begin to be ready (as you can see on the photo of our room) you get the reward and then you start to enjoy the Show.

More to come...

Jordi

[Jordi Fabre]

Saturday 27 January 2007

Today is the great day, the show officially starts and us we will open our Room at 9:30, so I will have a lot of comments to publish tomorrow.
On the meantime here is 6 AM and we are busy preparing the last things before the opening. We feel well with our room we think that it looks nice, the photo permits to see it. In the photo Parés smile, happy because the set up is close to its end.

More to come...

Jordi

[Jordi Fabre]

Sunday 28 January 2007

Yesterday Saturday and today Sunday are busy days with many people walking around, so I have not too much time to write. Briefly, from our perspective, the most important thing is that we are already open and that many people appear to be interested in our minerals as the photo below shows.
About the Show, the most common comment is that this year it is concentrated at the InnSuites and that the Clarion and Quality Inn became kind of satellite shows. In fact, the Clarion will no longer be a mineral show hotel, so next year the InnSuites and the Quality Inn will concentrate the best mineral dealers because the vast majority of the Clarion's dealers will be in the second floor rooms of the InnSuites and the Quality Inn.

About mineral novelties, this year seems to be a Rhodonite year. Good specimens come from the San Martín mine, Chiurucu, Peru, as well as in Conselheiro Lafaiete, Brazil. We have a nice selection from both finds and we will offer them on line when get back to Barcelona together with the new stalactitic Descloizites with white Calcite from Portugal that we have and that seem to please the customers here in Tucson.

As soon as we can we will take some photos of these novelties and we will publish them here in the Forum.

More to come...

[Jordi Fabre]

Monday 29 January 2007

Today, Monday, is the first day of the "death" week. Is the week between the start of selling at the motels and next week when it will be very busy because the Main show starts and the majority of visitors arrive.

As time allows, we will start to publish photos of the novelties that caught our eye here in Tucson. First we will publish a photo of one of the new Portuguese Descloizites that we brought ourselves. They are very special and they please people because they are very different from others and because of their contrast with the white Calcite.
Them was mined between 2005 and 2006 in a closed mine named Mina da Preguiça, located in Sobral da Adiça, Moura, Beja, Portugal.

More to come....

[Jordi Fabre]

Tuesday 30 January 2007

Although this is not a great year for novelties in Tucson, some small things appear here and there. Yesterday we got, just arrived, two interesting examples: Fluorites from a Quarry in Villa Carlos Paz in Córdoba, Argentina, mined in December of last year. They look similar to the Spanish ones from the Villabona area but their color is deeper, as the photo shows.

Also, on a small prospect located on the road between Bou-Azzer and Agdz in Morocco, were found very unusual Calcites with a special crystallography, elongated crystals and red phantoms, as the photo shows.

More to come...

[Jordi Fabre]

Wednesday 31 January 2007

Everything is beginning to come together. Today, Wednesday, the Mineralogical Record magazine started at the Clarion Hotel the exhibit "What's New in Minerals in Tucson". It will be there for two days, today and tomorrow, and it will show, from the inventories of the dealers, what new things appeared in Tucson so far this year. We have provided a Brazilian Huréaulite with Reddingite, a Portuguese Descloizite, an Argentinian Fluorite and a Moroccan Calcite. We will inform you about what other novelties were offered there.

Additionally, on Friday the Westward Look Show begins, and then on Thursday, February 8, is the start of the Main Show in the Convention Center. With all of these things, the rain yesterday (yes, also in Tucson it rains) and today's cold weather, we were so preoccupied that we had no chance to do more photos. Hopefully tomorrow.

More to come...

[Jordi Fabre]

Thursday 1 February 2007

Yesterday, suddenly, one of the typical Tucson events occurred. One second floor room at the InnSuites collapsed because so many people tried to get into it. What happened? The owners of the quarries at Artigas, Uruguay, received their merchandise after a long delay and so they started to unwrap specimens as they dragged crate after crate into their room and, as their specimens were very spectacular, the chaos was considerable.

It is quality stuff and although the scene was chaotic, we managed to get several nice specimens such as the Calcite completely covered by Amethystine Quartz shown in the photo.

That's Tucson, every new day a new story!

More to come...

[Jordi Fabre]

Friday 2 February 2007

The weather is nice today in Tucson. The grass is still damp due the last rainy days, but the sun is here and the weekend promise to be wonderful.
This is the busiest weekend in the Hotels. Westward Look opens today and all of other Hotels have their rooms open too, so in the next three days we will have a definitive vision about Tucson Show 2007.

More to come....

[Jordi Fabre]

Saturday 3 February 2007

Last Wednesday we promised inform about what other novelties were offered on the "What's New in Minerals" showcase managed for the magazine Mineralogical Record. We didn’t forget it but, honestly, the show case doesn't really offer many more novelties than the ones we talked about above.

In the photo you can see that the show case wasn’t anywhere near full. This means one of two things: either that this is not a good year for novelties or that dealers, given that the show case was in the Clarion, didn’t make much effort to take their novelties over there.

The idea is great, so next year it should be more successful especially as the show case will be in the InnSuites, so we expect that it will be full, as this Hotel will probably be the mineralogical center of Tucson because it will concentrate the vast majority of dealers with nice material who are currently dispersed between different Hotels.

More to come...

[Jordi Fabre]

Sunday 4 February 2007

Every day a new event occurs, for example yesterday Bryan Lees from Collector's Edge (extremely well know for the Sweet Home mine Rhodochrosites) exhibited part of his private collection of Colorado specimens in the Westward Look. Exceptional specimens plus many come from less well know Colorado localities. It was just a one day exhibit, so unfortunately is no longer displayed.

In the photos you can see a great green Sphalerite from Portland Mine, Ouray, a Rhodochrosite with Fluorite from Sweet Home Mine and a twinned Amazonite from Wigwam Creek. This particular specimen caught my eye not only for its beauty but also because we recently supplied a very similar one to Folch collection.

More to come...

[Jordi Fabre]

Monday 5 February 2007

Today was a nice sunny day, everybody was outside the rooms enjoying the sun and the great weather after all the last days cold.

It is sure that the InnSuites is one of the busiest Hotels where I had never been here in Tucson, at least on our room, so I had no too much time to do anything else that stay on my room attending customers and friends. Finally I had some time and I arrived now, late on the night, to publish this note as well as one photo, fast done, of one of the Peruvian Rhodonites that we got. Great color and no too bad shape, a very agreeable find.

More to come...

[Jordi Fabre]

Tuesday 6 February 2007

Today is a waiting day because tomorrow they will begin the set up for the main show at the Convention Center which opens on Thursday, February 8. The dealers who have been exhibiting here at the InnSuites, and who will also exhibit at the main show (this does not include us, we will remain open here, on the InnSuites through Friday the 9th) have to close their rooms and move everything to the Convention Center.

The main show is the current version of the show that actually was the only Tucson Show many decades ago when it was held in a quonset hut with a dirt floor at the Tucson Fair Grounds south of the city. From that modest beginning the "Tucson Show" has become a true giant which occupies dozens of motels, tent cities, any old odd buildings that can house minerals, fossils, artifacts, etc., and even table set up along certain roads.

We will write more about the Convention Center in the coming days but for now we would like to show you a photo of a Gold on matrix from Venezuela that we got. Curved and elongated crystals like this are called wire Gold (in English), just as we call such crystals of silver wire Silver. Wire gold is very uncommon and that is why we consider the find important.

More to come...

[Jordi Fabre]

Wednesday 7 February 2007

Today I leave John White to write the text his related with today's photo:

Because of my association with Jordi I have established my unofficial office in and just outside of his room at the InnSuites. Here one can sit in a chair by his door and meet most of the major collectors and nearly all of the world´s mineral museum curators. Jordi, of course, cannot resist taking photos. In this one he has interrupted a conversation with Dr. George Harlow, curator at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City, and his scientific assistant Jamie Newman.

John S. White

[Jordi Fabre]

Thursday 8 February 2007

Yesterday was the set up day for the Main Show, people were busy preparing everything for the official inauguration that will be today, Thursday at 10 AM. In the first photo we can see Peter Megaw from Tucson Gem & Mineral Society supervising everything. He seems happy to do it comfortably seated in his motor cart. In the next photo we can see, on the right of the photo, the wife of the well know Phoenix collector Gene Meieran in front the marvels that they will place on exhibit in their show case. At the end of the table close to the bottle of water, there is a fabulous Aquamarine. Today we will try to take a better picture of it. On the far right and very visible (as he is very tall) is Bryan Lees from Collector's Edge.
In the last photo we see Steve Smale, another famous collector, preparing his exhibit.

More to come...