Once again, it's time for my local show, the Haywards Heath show, probably the best UK mineral show. It's run every year by the Sussex Mineral and Lapidary Society, which I have been a member of for many years.



Despite the warnings about severe weather the journey to the show was uneventful and I arrived shortly after the opening time of 10am. The weather warnings (which included a news item the night before on national news about severe flooding at an industrial estate in Haywards Heath - just down the road but very localised due to blocked drains) probably put a few people off coming, but all the dealers made it, including dealers from France and the exhibitors from the National Museums of Scotland.

The first dealer I stopped at was Crystal Classics, they always bring a display cabinet filled with highly desirable minerals. Note in the photo below a large number of excellent South African fluorites - I've shown these in other show reports so won't detail them here, but Crystal Classics had an excellent selection.



One specimen of theirs that I loved was this minature cuprite from Wheal Phoenix in Cornwall



Staying with a Cornish theme, Mike Merry always offers a large selection of classic Devon and Cornwall minerals. He had two nice specimens of Cornish malachite, both from Wheal Buller. The first has been cut and polished, showing the characteristic dark tone of Buller malachite, and the second has been left naturally.





Peter Briscoe had some samples of magnesite, from the Boulby Mine in North Yorkshire, as pale blue crystals with hilgardite, easily mistaken for boracite which is well-known from this location.



More new British minerals were on offer from Ralph Sutcliffe, who had some excellent baryte crystal groups from the Wet Grooves mine in North Yorkshire.



It was great to see a brand new UK mineral dealer exhibiting at this show, Taranis Minerals, run by Nic and her partner Phil who have both been active mineral collectors for many years.



One specimen they had that caught my eye was this sample of chalcopyrite on tennantite from Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.



Finally, from the dealers, one specimen that I couldn't resist, so it's now in my personal collection - quartz (var. amethyst) from Karur, Tamil Nadu in India, from Midland Minerals.



Mineral shows are not just about buying minerals, it's about meeting people, so here are some photos of people well-known to mindat regulars who I saw at the show.







One of the invited displays at the show was from the National Museum of Scotland, who travelled down from Edinburgh to display a showcase of classic scottish minerals collected by famed mineralogist Heddle in the 19th century.



This time I wasn't just a regular visitor to the show, I was an invited guest, my purpose there was to judge the show competition, the theme of which was 'Zeolites and associated minerals', and six collectors who were known to have particular interest in zeolites
were invited to present a cabinet of minerals, and I was to judge them.

Here are the six cabinets and some of the highlights from each display. Note that I didn't know the names of the entrants until after I had chosen the winner.

Cabinet 1 was presented by Allan Mortimer.



Remember the theme includes 'and associated minerals', so please don't leave messages saying 'but Cavansite isn't a zeolite!' or similar. Some minerals from Allan's display:







Cabinet 2 was presented by Roy Starkey



Roy's display featured self-collected British zeolite specimens. Roy had already started packing up his display by the time I got to take photos (I had planned to do photography after the glass had been removed at the end of the show. Roy got there a few minutes before me! Some minerals from Roy's display:





Cabinet 3 was presented by Mike Wood



Mike's display was unique in that it contained mineral specimens he had collected from a single locality Sgurr nam Boc, a beach below tall tertiary basalt cliffs on the west coast of the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Some minerals from Mike's display:







Cabinet 4 was presented by Neil Hubbard



Again, a collection of zeolites that Neil has collected from around the UK. Some minerals from Neil's display:





Cabinet 5 was presented by Susan Smith



Susan presented a cabinet dedicated to minerals from the Deccan traps in India, probably the most famous zeolite locality in the world. Some minerals from Susan's display:





Cabinet 6 was presented by Dr Norman Moles



Norman's display contained self-collected zeolites from Northern Ireland, mostly collected in the 1970s - many of the quarries represented are now dead localities - filled in and built over. Some minerals from Norman's display:





Unfortunately in this competition there could only be one winner. It was difficult trying to judge the merits of cases of worldwide minerals versus a case of minerals from a single locality, and I could have easily made a justification for any one of the cases winning - but when it came back to the original topic of the competition, to present a display of "zeolite and associated minerals", one cabinet did that in a way that showed the variety of zeolite minerals worldwide, not just within basalt cavities, but from other geological environments too. It also contained the greatest number of distinct zeolite species, and the decider in my mind was the fabulous (and I found out, later, self-collected) Shropshire edingtonite crystals.

So, I decided on case 1 - Allan Mortimer, as the winner of the competition.



Congratulations to everyone who entered for putting on a fantastic display, and to the SMLS, and in particular Mark Oddy, for putting on a superb show.

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