Tucson this am 17 Traverse City this am 17 Are you kidding?

It was cold and sunny today with a biting breeze. We sent out 4 flat rate boxes today.

One of the really weird things we saw. Is Tuscon in China? I'm pretty sure Tucson is not (look close at the sign).

Remember the skulls piled at Electric Park? Check out what you can do with a little glue and some Turquoise.

The highlights of the day were finding a warm place to shop. We ended up at the Tucson Expo Center searching the back reaches of the JOGS Show. The druzy quartz we located was just spectacular. I wish I would have found this druzy before I had to give that foreign vendor at GJX so much cash (which I could use about now).

I asked if I could take this photo. I hope this keeps the photo police off me.

I asked Bonnie if I could take some pictures at the JOGS Show. She said there was no sign that she saw. Later we found their Vendor Booklet said “no Photos allowed”. I was just lucky that one of our friends had taken a few illegal photos so I can show you guys.

Typical Vendor room at the Holiday Inn.

The show at the Holiday Inn Holidome opened today, so we took the shuttle over to it. We did not buy anything there, but there were a ton of people that we did not feel like fighting. Vendors were inside as well as in a large tent outside. Some first floor rooms also had vendors.

I think my rant of the day is shoppers dragging around those wheeled super-sized luggage. One woman had a regular wheeled piece of luggage that was constantly blocking aisles. What are these people thinking?

Guard Bears at the Holiday Inn: AT A GEM SHOW! Un-bear-able!

There was certainly nice stuff at the Holidome, but I don’t like fighting crowds, so we left. We have another week so we’ll get back there.

The funniest thing I saw at the Holiday Inn were a couple bear skin rugs; AT A ROCK SHOW!

It is suppose to warm up tomorrow and by Sunday near 70 again. We heard reports of frozen pipes, and gas lines, closed schools, and temperatures turned down at businesses so the gas company could keep up with demand! Record lows today, AND record low highs (got that?)! At least there is no snow here.

Sunny and 50 diving to 33 in the pm-BRRR!

Ice in a bucket. Are you kidding. This is Tucson is it not?

The highlights of the day were the seminars we attended at the AGTA show covering the social media, Facebook, Twitter, web site blogging, and many other issues. Awesome and knowledgable speakers included Michael Schechter, Robyn Hawk, Daniel Gordon, and Dan Askew. Thanks to all these folks. Great job guys!

Another great amethyst cathedral.

Quartz Crystals-LaQuinta

After the morning training session we had a couple hours to kill and walked over to the GJX show across the street from the convention center. I found a wonderful vendor way in the back with some fine natural druzy cabs, and some additional enhanced druzy cabs. Wonderful material that I am excited to make jewelry out of.

After the afternoon training we drove down the strip and walked a couple shows at the La Quinta, and Howard Johnson’s.

Mastodon and Triceratops

Beads as far as the eyes can see-Howard Johnson's

The highlights of those shows included a fossil tent full of beasts and fish fossils. There were beads everywhere and some vendors told me I could not buy just a few pieces of rutilated quartz, but I had to buy a kilo of the stuff. Good luck to them! It was a very cold (for Tucson) 34 degrees and Bonnie kept asking if I was ready to go? Like every 5 minutes.

Rose quartz orbs.

We left when I was tempted with cold beer and dinner at a local brewpub.

Katie Hacker and Bonnie

But wait, there is more. I took Bonnie to a show strictly for Swarovski crystals, where we made a quick run thru. Bonnie got a short lesson from Katie Hacker, a famous beader seen on the public television series “Beads, Baubles & Jewels.” Her new product “Katydids” was the topic of exploration today. Watch for this in future beadwork from Bonnie!

I was impressed by this beaded hat.

Turquoise shortage...NOT

I think we are going to pack flat rate boxes tomorrow. We need to clean our mess up and get it shipped out. If it is could we may not go out at all tomorrow. (Bonnie: Yeah, right Don!) Stay tuned.

Rows of rocks.

Sunny and 63

This gives you an idea of how things look at AGTA. Sorry, no photos allowed on the floor.

Before opening-AGTA

Today we started out at the Tucson Convention Center and walked the aisles at the AGTA (American Gen Trade Association) show. This is a wholesale show and credentials are checked carefully. I have found in the past that this is primarily a high end gem and jewelry show.

Dealers specialize is selling wonderful pieces with much bling, mostly using facetted precious jewels. Many more vendors were peddling a very large assortment of precious facetted stones. This show has an excellent reputation for quality. No photography is allowed due to the proprietary nature of the jewelry and gemstones. I cannot begin to describe the amount and beauty of the gemstones at this show. Security for this show is very tight. The show pays the local police to have a large presence.

The largest show in Tucson is the GJX Show (Gem & Jewelry Exchange). There may be 400 vendors at this one show alone. Also a wholesale only show, it is held in a huge hard-sided tent across from the Tucson Convention Center. We had a shopping list of small, facetted stones, and found most of them. You will begin to see them in my work when I return home.

I think the busiest booth was Gary Wilson. He is from Traverse City, Michigan (near where we are located), and winters in Tucson. Gary always has high quality cabs of unusual materials. His four-sided booth was packed with people filling their trays with cabs. Most wire-wrappers do not cut their own cabs (unlike me), so they love Gary’s stuff.

OK here is my rant of the day. Good: We found some nice titanium vapor treated druzy.

BAD: The people from a large foreign gem-reknown country only wanted cash. We have found that most of these foreigners cannot get a credit card machine in America. Why do they even bother with these large trade shows? They must feel that most people carry around piles of on hunred dollar bills. You can bet that they claim a lot less than they take in when income tax comes around. Oh wait, they don’t pay tax. And guess what? They didn’t have any change! A cash only business with no change? They wouldn’t let you split up their packaging, wanting folks to buy 24 of the same color and size. Not surprisingly, they didn’t seem to have a lot of business. Anyway, this is my rant of the day.

Giant GJX Tent

Sentinel Peak (The locals call this "A" Mountain). Taken from Convention Center.

A couple side rooms off the main floor are interesting, as they are separated into groups from different places. One room is the Idar-Oberstein gem cutters. If you know anything about gem cutting and carving (especially agate cameos), you know the rich history of this area.

A second area contains the Brazilians, The Sri Lanka delegation, The Nigerians, and the Pakistan group, among others. We were most impressed with some of the remarkable agate cameos. It is unfortunate that the photo police are so strict, or I would share photos with you!

We just wore ourselves out today. When you get so tired that all the booths start looking the same, you better leave, which is what we did.

Rock Art-the cat in the foreground was carved by Jeff Schaezle from Billings, Montana (A Heart For Stone). Nice guy, I enjoyed our talk.

I KNOW we're in Tucson when I see orange trees at a hotel.

On the way home we stopped again at the Arizona Mineral & Fossil Show at the Hotel Tucson City Center. I picked up a high-pressure rock cleaner. I have wanted one of these for some time. This device resembles a spray gun and is capable of a stream of water at 1600 psi. It’ll put a nasty cut on you or take your finger off if you don’t watch it. I’ll test this out on some quartz crystals in my shop. If you see me with fewer fingers, you know I messed up.

A guy likes a power tool, and this is a good one.

A fair-sized Campo Meteorite.

And also fair-sized amethyst geodes.

We have a couple classes we want to take tomorrow at the AGTA Show. Look forward to this and our continued adventures. Thanks for reading my blog, it’s been quite popular.

Cloudy and some scattered showers 55

There was a change in the weather today. It got down into the 30’s during the night and only got up to around 55. We had to wear light jackets!

These hills are actually the Pima copper mine. You can see the weather changed.

The Gem & Lapidary Dealers Association show opened at the Starr Pass Marriott Resort. One of the high-class resort hotels in the Tucson area it sits perched high on a hill with a panoramic view of the city.

The jewelry at this show is mostly finished, fine jewelry with faceted precious stones, but there are a couple dealers I look for at the show. I found some nice black opal triplets, but they were a bit more expensive than the last few years. (Big surprise!) We also found some assorted cabs of Rhodocrosite and Larimar (Pectolite), as well as a few strands of beads. Photos were prohibited at this venue because of all the spectacular and expensive precious gemstone jewelry. Sparkles were everywhere.

Jogs.

We grabbed a burger and then headed to the JOGS Show (The Jewelry, Gem and Mineral Exposition) for our next stop. I told Bonnie just before we walked in that I didn’t need any more Pietersite.

The first place we visited was my favorite Pietersite dealer. This caused me to buy more Pietersite. Am I bad? I also found some high quality Sugilite rough that one of the dealers had stashed under a table. This was a case of idle conversation paying off. The Sugilite was pricey but very good quality just a step below the impossible-to-find gel Sugilite. I do not THINK Bonnie bought any beads, but I was not watching her all the time.

Sonoran Sunset: Blue=Chrysocolla, Black=Tenorite, Red=Cuprite.

We just made a quick walk-thru, bought these few things and left.

Our next stop was a new show called 22^nd Street Mineral, Fossil, and Gem Show.

Saber toothed Tiger, Cave Bears, and assorted skulls

This show was actually in a long real tent, not a hard-sided tent like other major shows.

The show had more of a flea market feel. Although the show was small by Tucson standards I found great things there. One Fossil Dealer had a table of fossils including Sabertooth tigers and cave bear.

Four Oviraptors

Another Dealer, indiana9 Fossils, had a large plate from Mongolia that contained four Oviraptors. Yes you can own it for $75,000!

Yellow Cat Redwood from Utah.

The most surprising find was finding Yellow Cat Petrified Wood from Wyoming. In my opinion this rare wood is some of the most spectacular petrified wood in the world. Very little is found. This wood is an amazing red color with full fortification agate inclusions.

The dealer said he wore the tires off his 4WD getting to the stuff. Apparently it is way out in the boonies. Pricey? Yes; but worth it. I bit the bullet and bought one small piece. He had beautiful specimens.

Man what nice wood!

We had another great day. Who knows where we’ll end up tomorrow.

Sunny 74

First thing this morning we drove to the Gem & Lapidary Wholesalers Show. This is a big wholesale show (you have to have a business license to get in) held in two massive hard-sided tents called the Gem Mall. One of the tents is pretty much all beads. I will get to this tent later.

Massive hard sided tents are common for the shows. We have found they do leak in the rain.

How about I just buy the whole table?

We started in the larger tent first. We had already covered two rows on the 29th. I thought we were doing well until Bonnie saw those high quality, precious gemstone faceted beads on one of the vendors tables. These are sparkly things, ruby, sapphire, emeralds, amethyst. I knew I was in trouble when the nice young lady who was in the booth was assisting her (sort of more like bonding with her) by pointing out the great prices (actually they were priced well, considering the quality). Anyone that has read my blog knows I do pay for quality; our customers deserve the best. How much she bought, as I patiently waited, would probably support a small third-world country. I may have found a couple cabs to buy, but not much. We found some nice gold-bonded chains of good quality. They were priced reasonably, so we are looking forward to giving our customers a good value on this new product.

Inside the bead tent.

You cannot fathom the amount of beads in Tucson.

We went into the smaller tent. The smaller tent is primarily beads, beads, beads. Bonnie was still in shock over how much she spent buying beads in the big tent, so we made a quick run-through and left.

We took a shuttle to the Grant Inn, another show sponsored by the G&LW. This is a smallish show at hotel near downtown. Vendors are in some rooms and they have a couple tents out back that we found contained a couple interesting things for sale.

$2,000 per egg!

One vendor had half a dozen dinosaur nests for sale. Some of these nests were $2,000 per egg, and some were $1,000 per egg. We found our long-time buddy Ken Flood, from Keweenaw Gem and Gift, in a tent on site, selling copper, Datolite, and other minerals from Michigan’s copper country. Even though a small show, we had some fun and did not spend much money. We took the shuttle back to the Gem Mall and broke for lunch.

Keweenaw Gem Booth.

After lunch we went to one of my favorite hotel shows, The Arizona Mineral & Fossil Show at the Hotel Tucson City Center on N. Granada Avenue.

Nicely polished wood.

There are really interesting things at this show. Outside the hotel entrance we saw a spectacular petrified Sequoia slab, some large amethyst geodes, and a huge slab of Mara Mamba Tiger Eye.

A huge slab of petrified sequoia. The slab was so shiny it reflected a van going by! The reflection made this photo unique.

This hotel is filled with fossil, meteorite, specimen, and jewelry dealers. We love peaking in the rooms as you never know what you will see.

What a gem! Ammonite

I purchased some nice quartz crystals that were drilled, What was unusual is they had iron stains in bands on the outside of them running in lines around the crystal. These were a newer thing out of China. We also got a couple of Tibetan Quartz crystals. I purchase some staurolite’s from a Russian vendor. These were nice crosses from the Kola Peninsula. I also bought a small piece of rough Eudalite from Quebec. This stuff usually is Russian.

Detail of the Sequoia.

A large hall at this hotel is filled with fossils of all sorts. The Black Hills Institute always has a great display of both real and replica fossils. Other dealers had fossil fish, and I saw a replica Megaladon mouth.

Megaladon mouth reproduction.

The “Meg” is the largest shark ever (think of a school bus with teeth). I make pendants out of megaladon teeth. Because these sharks fed on whales and had to consume a ton of food a day, it wasn’t long before they ran out of food. Being eating machines, they often ate each other….presto, no more Megalodons. Having no bones, the only fossil evidence are their teeth. Don’t you just love a good story?

Black Hill Institute display.

We had another wonderful day. Tomorrow it may rain, which means I will search for some rough rock. Maybe we’ll go to the JOGS show where we find nice druzy quartz cabs.

Fish.

Sunny and 73

We drove back to Tucson from Blythe, California this morning. This is a fairly boring four hour jaunt through the desert.

Amethyst chunks abound at the Rapa River Show.

When we got back I noticed the Rapa River Show was in full swing, so we stopped and shopped. This show is held with several others at one of the motels/hotels on the access drive along I-10. Vendors were set up at all these locations and ready to accept our cash and credit.

I've seen amethyst geodes, but seldom agates inside them: WOW!

Bonnie found some bargain beads. This will be the first of many beads we will see and buy during the show.

Bonnie hitting the first of many gem dealers she will shop.

I bought some great cabochons, some for me, and some for a friend.

Hug-a-crystal.

Cabs for me and a friend. Some of these are your John.

We saw tables of rocks, crystals, geodes, and all other kinds of good things. there is usually some spectacular specimens out in front of the Riverpark Inn and Bonnie hugged a huge one. Lots of captioned photos today and not much yakking.

Jade ship.

Carved from one piece of Australian Boulder Opal.

Our buddy Jeff Anderson peddling his agates.

Tables full of rocks abound. Rapa River.

A second Boulder Opal carving.

At the end the day we had a great steak at our favorite steak house in Tucson, The Silver Saddle.

Tomorrow all the shows will be in full swing and I am not sure exactly where we are going. I guess you will have to o check in with us tomorrow. I don’t know the last time I was so excited. I think it was a couple days ago when I found that extra fry in the bottom of the McDonalds bag (don’t tell me that doesn’t thrill you too).

I believe we made it to Quartzite!

RV-ers can camp anywhere on BLM land near Quartzite with a permit.

Sunny 73

We arose early and drove to Quartzite. The trip was uneventful and even though we could not see the vistas in the dark, we knew from experience that we would see the same landscape when it got light; desert, cacti, rocks, and craggy hills. We know when we are approaching Quartzite from the east that when we top that last hill we will see a landscape littered with white RVs, both out in the desert and in town.

We jumped off the freeway and ventured to the access road on the south side of the freeway, where we knew the Desert Gardens Show resides. This was the last official weekend for this show, but many vendors hang out after the show officially ends. There are loads of uncut rocks and minerals, slabs, and jewelry, as well as some other weird things for sale. You would think from the name of the show, that this is held in a lovely desert garden in bloom with cacti and desert flowers. Well sports fans, it is actually just a bunch of RVs and tents parked in a huge, windy, dusty parking lot. Nothing “gardeny” about this. ( I think I just made up a word)

We pretty much had the show to ourselves.

The Garden’s show is primarily a tailgate, with many vendors displaying their wares next to their RVs. Much of the stuff we saw was a bit picked over, but we scored a slab of quality Tiffany Stone, some Peacock Obsidian, and a Kokopelli metal garden ornament for our daughter’s garden back in Tucson.

This was an amazing deer made from junk. Notice Kokopelli between the rear legs .

The most exceptional find of the day were three slabs of Dinosaur Bone, the quality of which I have not seen since the 70’s. I mentioned this to the guy selling it, and he just smiled and said that this stuff came from a major collection someone had purchased in the early 70’s. Bonnie recalls a story about the sale she read some time back. We are still researching where this D-Bone came from. I spent mucho donaro on this stuff, but I am a sucker for high quality.

The picture does not do this stuff justice.

After roaming around at the Gardens we drove back across the freeway and went to T-Rock, owned by some people we know that live in Calumet in the U.P. in the summer. I bought some Star Jasper and Chevron Amethyst.

We're not in Michigan anymore.

We are spending the night in Blythe, California. Bonnie adds facetiously “The Beautiful”. Basically Blythe is a street that runs from one end of town to the other and everything Blythe has to offer is on this one street. The natives fondly refer to this town as “Blight”.

Bonnie checks out some Chrysocolla.

Quartzite is also a big flea market.

Tables piled high with rocks for sale at Quartzite.

We’re headed back to Tucson tomorrow and will be resting up for the shows starting Saturday.

Beginning on January 28th I will be blogging every day from Tucson. There may be a surprise side trip to the Desert Gardens Show in Quartzite also.

The Tucson Desert

This year is the 57th Annual Tucson Gem and Mineral Show which is the main show, sponsored by the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society and held at the Tucson Convention Center during the second week of the Tucson shows. The main event has nearly 250 exhibitors. The theme for the show this year will be “Minerals of California”. I look forward to seeing this exhibit and showing you a taste of it in my blog.

The rest of the shows, collectively known as the Tucson Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Shows, are comprised of some 50 individual shows with anywhere from 30 to 300 vendors each and are scattered all over the city. It took me a few years of going to figure out everything like where to park, whether a show is wholesale or retail, and where the assorted “good stuff” can be gleaned.

Animals that are rare in Michigan

I see the weather will be sunny and mid-70’s for the next week in Tucson. It’ll be rough on our bodies, but someone has to suffer for you guys. Our daughter lives in Tucson, so lodging is great. Our son would enjoy going, but has to stay home. We will be flying and renting a car.

We are really looking forward to Tucson.

Fine crystals abound at the Gem Shows