Category Archives: Quartzite Rock Shows

Quartzsite Rock Shows: What did we find?

I thought I’d show you some of the things we bought in Quartzsite. I sometimes buy exceptional Cabochons cut by others, especially Malachite or other minerals that contain hazardous materials. I also often purchase high quality, unusual or exceptional cabs. These might be bargains, but at other times the Cabs are so notable I pay up so our customers can purchase and enjoy the rare, unusual, and exceptional.

Bonnie helped lure me into the Bumblebee Jasper and the Amethyst rocks. The Malachite was all my pick. I’ll get them made just in time for St. Patricks Day (or any other day).

Really exceptional Malachite. The large teardrop in the middle is 3″h x 2 1/4″w. Awesome!

I had to make this one within an hour of retuning from the trip to Quartzsite. The pendant size in 3″ x 2 1/4″ and the reason it looks a little odd is because he is a wild guy and the lighting got distorted by the stone which is faceted. I loved it and wore it to dinner to show my friends.

Very nice Bumblebee.

Orange Sodalite

Seraphanite and Sunstone from Russia. This material is awesomely silky.

I can make some great jewelry from this beautiful Amethyst I found in a tub of slabs.

Pink Amethyst Lace of exceptional quality.

Russian Tektites. Tektites are natural glass formed and ejected from a meteorite strike.

Unakite, a stone found in many places including our Great Lakes beaches.

I came home tired from driving, but excited to start making jewelry, and so I did!

QIA Pow Wow at Quartzsite 2018

The QIA Powwow in Quartzsite

Picking Megalodon Teeth at the Powwow

Vendors located in the QIA Building.

Gem Grade Rainbow Petrified Wood

Bumblebee (not) Jasper

Blue Cornetite in Chrysocolla on Heterogenite from the Congo

I did not know Dino’s wore armor.

Tubs of slabs as far as the eyes can see.

This seemed like Steampunk meeting Punk

About 500 Vendors here at the Powwow

The dealer was proud of his Rainbow Wood. It was nice gem grade stuff.

Picking one of a thousand tubs.

Yep, I’m on it

a great slab of Pink Amethyst Lace; bought this one.

A beautiful desert drive. Between Quartzsite and Parker.

The QIA Pow Wow Rock Show has been operating for almost 50 years, offering rockhounds a down-home type of rock show to find cabs, slabs, stone, and equipment. A fledgling Quartzsite Improvement Association hosted a small rock show back then which has become a sort of Mecca, with people returning year after year.

Many other locales in Quartzsite have rocks and minerals. One of the largest sellers of rough rock are T-Rock, at the very west end of Main Street. 50 gallon drums and tables piled high with rough rock of all kinds fill their lot. The prices are very fair and Mike and Teresa are top notch people (From the U.P. of Michigan).

We walked our legs to exhaustion at the Pow Wow and then a quick stop at T-Rocks, and a trip down one aisle at Desert Gardens. We bought one rock there and left. We were tired out!

T-Rock

Lots of Rough at T-Rock

Bonnie looking for rough rock.

Please check out our hand crafted stone jewelry featuring Greenstone (Chlorastrolite) Michigan’s State Gemstone, Petoskey Stone Michigan’s State Stone, Lake Superior Agate Minnesota’s State Gemstone, Gems from the Copper Country of Michigan, and semi-precious stones from around the world. These are created with wire artistry by Don Reed and make wonderful gifts for stone lovers–Check them out!

Quartzsite Rock Shows 2018

A beautiful desert drive.

Getting to the Quartzsite Rock Shows

It seems like forever driving through the desert from Tucson to Quartzsite, but when you crest the hill on I-10 east of Quartzsite Arizona, and look out at a white desert, you know you’re there, and treasures may soon be found. The white I’m referring to are all the RV’s dry camped on the BLM property surrounding Quartzsite. Quartzsite is the January destination for rockhounds, the home of numerous Quartzsite rock shows. The small town is the last vestige of civilization in western Arizona, 20 or so miles from the California Border on I-10.

We do not take our RV, as its easier to rent a Hotel Room in Parker, 35 miles north. Other rockhounds might spend the entire winter in their RV’s in the Quartzsite area.

Not many people out at the Gardens today, but we found some treasures.

A typical tailgate booth at Desert Gardens.

You can never tell what might be in a tub.

You can not attend all the shows at one time in Quartzsite. This year we decided on dates encompassing the Desert Gardens Show, , and the QIA Pow Wow. The Pow Wow began in 1965 and is sponsored by the QIA (Quartzsite Improvement Association). About 500 vendors sell their goods on the QIA Grounds, making it the largest show in Quartzsite. Plenty of rocks, minerals, jewelry, beads, and lapidary things will make a rockhound happy. Some of the other shows in town are more of a flea market with all kinds of stuff, so we are looking forward to this rock-themed show.

The Desert Garden Rock Show

One dealer had plenty of Ocean Jasper left.

Some really fine Chrysocolla cabs.

The Desert Gardens show is far from a garden. This show covers a few acres of flat, barren desert where the vendors’ tailgate or sell from tents located near their RVs. Careful haggling might produce some happy bargains here. I also like to pick the brains of the vendors (often miners that have brought their finds to the desert). We always look for things we’ve not seen, are rare, or no longer being mined.

Bonnie and I are rock pickers and love rooting through other collectors slabs, rocks, and discards, to find those hidden treasures. The time it takes is not important when it comes to rock picking, it is the thrill of the hunt! Sometimes we find a new rock, but more often it is a small piece or cabochon of a familiar rock that we know and our customer like.

What we bought so far…

Today we mostly bought cabochons and just a few slabs. I usually cut my own stones, but malachite is something I don’t like to cut because of the toxic chemicals in it. And small earring sets are tedious and time consuming, so we bought some of those matched sets today. We got some crazy lace, mookaite jasper, and rhodochrosite.

Enjoy our adventures over the next couple days. They’ll be loads of pictures and exciting bits. I ran out of battery on my camera but I’ll do better tomorrow.

Quartzsite Rocks and Redneck Guitars

Amazonite crystals.

T-Rock's Garden.

Clear sunny skies greeted us as we arrived in Quartzsite for Day 2 of our rock shopping adventures. We continued to walk the aisles of Desert Gardens searching for the best stones to make our jewelry, and found an amazing ammonite display from Lake George Colorado. They told us this is one of the only area on earth that smoky quartz crystals and amazonite are found together. We spoke to the miner and he related that after many years of mining amazonite he hit a four foot by four foot pocket that contained beautiful museum quality specimens of amazonite with smoky quartz crystals. He said it took three years of cleaning to get these specimens ready for sale. Combination specimens can be valued at many thousands of dollars. Larger amazonite specimens were in the $150-$500 range. We bought several small bags of pieces and chunks to make cabochons and jewelry.

amozonsmoky1

Digging through the many bins of water-covered slabs led to cold and wrinkled hands. There wasn’t too much that I didn’t already have, but I found a few treasures. One dealer had some lovely crystal rhodochrosite. This material is quite scarce and is unlike the common pink/black/white banded rhodochrosite in that it is quite translucent and has no banding. The Argentina mine that this chunk came from was purchased by the Chinese for mining of precious metals. The mine has been converted to an open pit operation that virtually ruined all of the superb rhodochrosite that had previously been mined there. The Chinese were after other materials, and lapidarists are in mourning over the loss of this great gemstone source.

The water was icy in the morning.

Quartzsite is like a redneck garage sale.

The redneck display champ.

We always get a laugh over some of the things we see in the flea market area near Tyson Wells. You always see an array of random redneck relics. If it is something you didn’t know you needed, you can find it in the flea market at Quartzsite. My redneck winner of the day was a guy with a card table containing animal skin rugs and banjo and guitar shaped facsimiles made from license plates. He must have ties to the Midwest because two were Michigan license plates. Interestingly, one of them is a non-expiring trailer license which costs $75. I also saw under his cardtable a pair of green antique glass net floats. Where do people get this stuff?

We had to return to T-Rock to pick up our purchases from yesterday and marveled at their rock garden of random large rocks encircled by large wire trees decorated by large glass balls similar to the ones under the guys card table. We gave up the shopping early and returned to the banks of the Colorado River.

We will return to our home base in Tucson tomorrow. When I get back to my portable photo studio I will take some detailed pictures of the treasures we purchased. For all of you who are coming to the Quartzsite shows, I left lots still on the tables–happy picking.

Quartzsite

Shopping the Quartzsite Rock Shows 2014

A pleasant 4 hour drive from Tucson, the town of Quartzsite (where there is no Quartzite in Quartzsite) is a small oasis in the desert mountains about 20 miles from the California border. The town explodes during the winter months with Snowbirds, Rockhounds,flea market shoppers, and RV fans. The giant RV shows are in full swing, but there is some early rock picking around also.

Desert Gardens

Later in the month the Powwow opens as does the Tyson Wells Show, but our favorite show in Quartzsite has always been the Desert Gardens Show (there are no gardens at Desert Gardens). This is a tent/RV tailgate show in a large dusty lot along the freeway. Bargains can be found by the astute buyer, and always lots of interesting rock. I go to Desert Gardens mainly for the rough rock, but other hidden treasures can often be found.

The REAL gem amongst all the rocks at T-Rock.

Our first stop in town was T-Rock that our Upper Peninsula friends Mike and Theresa Thompson own. I found some lovely lavender opal, and several other random pieces of gemstone rough. They are open all year in case you come through off season. I’ll be hitting that place again.

Real nice color in this bucket of Chrysocolla.

At the third booth we looked at, Bonnie seemed to be lusting over a couple small buckets of Chrysocolla. I recongnized this to be old stock from the Ray Mine. You would swear it was Turquiose, it was so blue. I guessed there was around 60-70 pounds. Bonnie said we could keep some and sell some, so I bought it all.

How do we get this home?

We looked at a 4400# piece of Tiger Iron as well as a piece of Gaspeite I would guess to be about 800-1000# at the Australian Outback Mining booth. Peanut wood was available, but not as good a quality as ten years ago. There was one very unusual Peanut Wood piece that was combined with Mookaite. We were told that it came from their area where they mine Mookaite. No Peanut Wood was available last year in the way of Peanut Wood, so even though we did not get any, it will make other’s happy.

What is more fun than buying rocks? Talking to the dealers; picking their brains, so to speak. You can learn so much and fill your trivia banks just by chit-chat.

Next I spotted some Royal Imperial Jasper slabs that the dealer had acquired in a collection he purchased. Amazing, nice stuff indeed. Expect some Royal Imperial Jasper jewelry in the future.

We saw some buckets of crap (Coprolite), but did not buy any.

Coprolite (petrified poo)

4400#!!! Look over Bonnie's shoulder for large Gaspeite.

We did not finish looking at the Garden’s show today, but was have another day. I’ll keep you posted.

Gaspeite.

Mookaite/Peanut Wood

Getting up Early for Rocks.

Jan 23 Partly cloudy, high of 75 (perfect)

If you get on the road early, this is what you see.

The Pow Wow is sponsored by the Quartzite Improvement Association and the Quartzite Road Runners Rock and Mineral Club. This show is the best rock show, packed full of cabs, slabs, chunks, and jewelry of all sorts. Everything is laid out on tables, in plastic trays filled with water, on the ground in piles, and you have to stay alert to not miss something!

Those that get to the Powwow early get the best pickings.

A nice table or Malachite. Some Azurite & Chrysocolla mixed in.

This is large, over a hundred vendors I estimate, and they seem eager to part with their goods at reasonable prices. Slabs can be found for $2-$50, depending on the stone. The thrill of the day was a treasure hunt in someone’s Blowout Sale!

These Amethyst pineapples dressed up the fossils nicely.

There were loads of tumbled stones, bins of small slabs, and much rough rock.

We purchased slabs galore today, the most ever. I am eager to go home and make jewelry from them.

While Bonnie was making a run to the car, I purchased some tickets for a raffle from the Road Runners Club. I told the lady to give me a call when I had won. I had just set down to rest when Bonnie came back and very soon my phone rang. A man from the club called to tell me to come get my prize! They were drawing every 15 minutes, and I won in the very next drawing. I won a nice bolo tie that matched what I had on. Now my tickets are back in the drawing for the grand prize of $500, which I also expect to win. I need this extra cash so I can spend it in Tucson!

Jade Fish anyone?

Bonnie loved to pick these milk cartons.

The crowds were sparse early, then peaked around 2pm. We did something else today that I am saving to talk about when we will not be at rock shows next week.
I think we will see what is at the Tyson Wells Show tomorrow and re-visit a couple dealers that have some things I probably should have already purchased.

Halite (aka salt).

Saving Tibet & Hunting Rocks

87 degrees, gas $3.05 Life is Good

desertgardenssign

As I write this series of our adventures in the West, I first have to tell you that we will be on the alert to tell you about things that we don’t see in Northern Michigan on a regular basis. The temperatures and the gas prices are the first things!

Leaving Phoenix today, Bonnie noticed the sticker on the car ahead of us that said: “Save Tibet”. This is rather uncommon back home. Don’t get me wrong, I am not opposed to saving Tibet, but I am saying that it is not a hot topic back home.

We spent the night in Phoenix and discovered Sam’s Café in the Arizona Center that served a most delicious meal, what I described as crab cake tacos (although they had an appropriate Mexican name—this is just my translation). Bonnie enjoyed a Rico Rita, a Marguerita with coconut rum, spiced rum, Tuaca, and pineapple juice. Bonnie’s drink was sweeter than the one I had, and she was in a state of bliss. The chips were a mix of several types and were delicious, in case you wanted to know!

There was little competition for rocks in the morning at the Desert Gardens Show

We thought this was a fitting sign we saw in Parker.

Now about the rock shopping! We headed to Quartzite Arizona, (aka the biggest RV campground in the USA). In the winter months Quartzite swells with rockhounds, RV enthusiasts and flea market fanatics. The three main events for rockhounds are the PowWow, put on by the local rock club, a large show in an area called Desert Gardens, and the Tyson Wells Show. Here are some secrets: There are no gardens at the Desert Gardens Show, there is no real PowWow at the Powwow, and I’ve not seen any wells at the Tyson Wells. Oh yeah, there’s also no Quartzite at Quartzite! Several other small shows offer vendors selling their wares–flags, knives, whatever. Our favorite full time rock place is T-Rock, friends from Calumet, Mike and Theresa. Their location on the west end of town is loaded with tons of rough lapidary rock of consistent high quality.

The Pow Wow and the Desert Gardens shows could be described as flea markets for rock hounds. Vendors come from all around the world to sell their stone, slabs, jewelry, carvings, and much more.. You can never tell what you might find, that’s the fun of it. Quartzite is the common man’s rock show—more quirky. Many of the Tucson shows are more upscale, with fancier displays, more sedate. Each show has it’s own character.

Our Quartzite Adventure started at the Desert Gardens show. This is a tailgate type of show where people set up their RV with their wares outside their doors. They put out their excess and we come along and buy it! This has always been a fun and friendly show. Vendors generally have time to talk to customers about their local rocks and jewelry. Many of the dealers collected the rocks they sell, and I love to hear their trivia about rocks and minerals, as you all know!

If you had the cash a vertebrate section could be had.

Outstanding color in these. the one in the middle was $1200.

My first purchase was at the first booth we came to. Wade’s Woods and Rocks from Utah specializes in dinosaur bone and has an assortment of petrified wood. I immediately spotted some bright red polished pieces in a small tray with what appeared to be the very rare Yellow Cat petrified wood. My suspicions were confirmed on this and I was told I was the only person who recognized it and knew what it was. Tiffany used this material in days of yore to make great jewelry because of the brilliant red coloration. There is not much of it around any more, so, it is not often seen or known. The specimen I have at home is a remarkable piece I considered making jewelry from, but it is such a nice specimen I hesitated to cut it up. I feel better to have bought these smaller pieces that will be perfect for jewelry.

Remarkable Bumblebee's from Java.

I found some very nice Bumble Bee Jasper from Java (Indonesia) at J2B2 Rock & Equipment. (This is really a Travertine not a Jasper, but we’ll get into that some other time!) The gentleman that cuts this material, David Dickinson, was also in the booth, and pulled out some remarkable pieces that he had cut and polished. Bumble Bee Jasper is sometimes pitted and hard to work with, but the piece I purchased seems to have enough silica in it to be solid enough for great jewelry.

I found a NEW (to me) jasper—Hog Creek Jasper from southern Idaho. The reds and yellows form a mossy pattern with a clear bluish agate background reminding me of Wingate Agate.

Hog Creek Jasper.

We had to wear sunscreen and return often to the car for our water stash. Ah, Arizona in the winter! Tomorrow the PowWow opens. We will be there with bells on!