Yes, it's time for another show report - and the first in the new system on mindat.org (so you can add comments!).



The Bakewell Show has been running for 25 years - and is without doubt one of the two best mineral shows in the country. Tiny compared to the Munich show I'll be at next month, but a very much more personal and friendly show. And if you want to go looking to build up a nice mineral collection spending no more than £5 per rock, there is plenty of choice (and there are a few more expensive rocks for those with expensive tastes!)

For those who have followed my UK show reviews over the last couple of years, you will find some reassuringly familiar themes here - photos of nice British minerals, some nice worldwide material, Ian Bruce's (Crystal Classics) children doing their very best to extract money out of us and an embarrassing photo of Mark Wrigley of Thames Valley Minerals - all part of the norm for UK shows it seems now.



Starting in the larger of the two halls, we met up with Nick Carruth, who had these nice Quartz pseudomorphs after Scheelite from the Ramsley Mine in Devon (I visited the extensive dumps of this mine earlier in the year - didn't find any of these unfortunately).



Don Edwards showed me some new Fluorite from a single pocket find at the Crich Quarry in Derbyshire - excellent for Derbyshire fluorite and, more unusually, fluorescent (possibly do to organic inclusions).



Entering the smaller hall, we saw a small gathering of rather well-known UK mineral colletors descending on the Crystal Classics table. This time Ian Bruce had put on what he calls a "do-it-yourself table".



He simply had a pile of flats of British minerals from the recently-purchased Philadelphia Academy collection and was letting collectors hunt through the boxes one by one.



On the other half of his table, "Joe's Minerals" (run by two of Ian's children - Joe and Verity) were selling off copies of the ExtraLapis magazines and some of the lower-priced items from the Philadelphia Collection



Ian pulled out a couple of real classic British minerals from the flats to show me - two samples from the Woolley Farm, collected in the 19th century, and well-known to anyone who knows their British mineralogy (or has read the Embrey and Symes book on the Minerals of Cornwall and Devon). Firstly, an exceptional hand-specimen of Schorl:



and my favourite - Apatite crystals with Schorl from the same locality:



Moving on around, Mike Brooke (Broadstone Minerals) was selling a collection of minerals on behalf of the owners which included some very nice pieces (including an Adamite which I ended up buying), but the star of the collection was undoubtedly this killer (in more than one sense of the word!) Uranocircite from Brazil:



Mike Merry had his usual fine selection of Cornish minerals, including some samples from a recent find of Botallackite from the beach below Cligga Head on the north coast of Cornwall. The best of these are quite probably the best examples of this mineral species ever, and Mike had a few of the good pieces from this find for sale.



And finally, I will end with some advice. If you know I'm taking your photo for a show report, I point my camera at you and tell you to smile, then try smiling!



Sorry Mark, but this was the only photo that showed your impressive stock of minerals!

Next show: Munich!

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