Munich Mineral Show 2011

For the sixth year running, mindat.org visits the Munich Mineral Show in Germany. The Munich Mineral show is the biggest single-venue mineral and gem show in the world.



French dealer Alain Martaud was displaying some classic worldwide specimens



One of his specimens, a wonderful pyrrhotite from Guanajuato, Mexico



And another, a great specimen of Scheelite coated with Tungstite on Quartz, from Mundo Nuevo, Peru.



Next stop - visiting Giuseppe Siccardi and his wife, owners of YourMineralCollection from Italy.



They had a very attractive Dioptase from the Congo.



Bruce Cairncross had another specimen from the same locality, but more mysterious, Dioptase with Plancheite pseudomorphs after an unknown mineral. Possibly Calcite?



Bode Publications (here is Reiner Bode and his daughter Kristina) were at the show promoting their magazine and launching their latest book - AGATE III - which will be reviewed shortly on mindat.



Jordi Fabre from Spain always has interesting new minerals for my reports - this time he had a whole suite of minerals from the Huanggangliang Iron mines, Chifeng, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China - this is a Genthelvite on matrix.



And a large garnet from the same locality.



As the theme of the show was "European Classics", it was nice to find a true English classic specimen from Simon Hildred (who was with Wendel Minerals at the show) - a lovely jackstraw Cerussite from the famous Pentire Glaze mine from the northern coast of Cornwall.



Wendel Minerals had this absolutely stunning Hessite from Romania.



Of course, the best part of the show is meeting up with friends. Here are Justin and Brandy Zzyzx, owners of TheVug.com, over in Munich for the show.



Another romanian mineral, Gehlenite, from Gabor Koller, who had a good selection of similar pieces.



This impressive Sugilite crystal (about 8mm) was offered by Kalahari Old Classics - any crystals of Sugilite are rare, and this is outstanding.



More mindat friends - left to right - David Eicher, Mike Rumsey, Frank De Wit



Crystal Classics and Kristalle had their usual superb booth. Here are Ian and Diana in front of their cabinets.



Spirifer minerals had the exclusive on specimens from the 2011 workings at the Rogerley mine in England at the show - as the majority of pieces are still in the USA being prepared for Tucson. This summer, an excellent new pocket (called 'Penny's Pocket') was discovered and worked, and Tom was able to get some of these pieces. (Note the purple fluorite in the middle is from Morocco!)



Here's one of these pieces.



From outside of the Rogerley mine in the quarry comes this yellow fluorite, found last year (while I was visiting with Tom), from the 'Sutcliffe Vein'.



delete



A great selection of cobaltian calcites from Morocco at the Spirifer booth.



In the display section, Spirifer were showing some excellent erythrite specimens from Morocco. These are the sorts of minerals that we will be collecting this time next year during the Mindat Conference 2012.



And part of my work at the Munich show was preparation and planning for our conference this time next year. Here I am with Mohammed (one of our local experts), Tom and Rashid (the owner of the hotel we are staying at).



Back to the spirifer booth for drinks. Here Krystoff is pouring a drink for Asia with Chris Mavris in the background.



And this is what they were drinking - Old Krupnik! A mixture of honey and grain alcohol.



We weren't the only ones drinking. Here are Robin Hansen and Audrey Lloyd from Crystal Classics.



Robin and Audrey were probably celebrating the success of the themed exhibition for this year's show, "European Classics" - containing the most incredible specimens of European minerals from museums and private collections. This was organized by Ian Bruce of Crystal Classics who, with his team and the institutions and private collectors involved, worked tirelessly for many months to put this together. The Natural History Museum in London alone brought 59 specimens for display - including many true UK classic specimens.



It was, without doubt, the best exhibition I have seen so far at Munich. Many were comparing it to the "American Mineral Treasures" display at the 2008 Tucson TGMS show. - and although I wouldn't quite go that far, it was certainly awe inspiring.

Here are a very few of the many wonderful specimens on show:























This is just a small taste of the specimens involved. I hope that with the aid of other visitors we can put together a complete photographic record of this incredible exhibition. If you have a good photo then why not upload it and post a link in a reply below!

Next year's theme will be "African Minerals" - if you have truly exceptional specimens in your collection and you'd like them displayed next year, please contact Ian Bruce.

---

In order to leave comments to this article, you must be registered