Bakewell Show Report 2006

What better way to spend your birthday than driving half-way up the country for a day-out to the Bakewell Rock Exchange 2006.

This show is arguably the UK's best mineral show - it's better in some ways than the Haywards Heath show, next month, but Haywards is better in other ways, so I don't want to be forced to choose between them! It's organized every year by the PLMS (Peak Lapidary and Mineral Society), please don't get their acronym confused with another one popular in internet chatroms. It's held in a school in Bakewell, Derbyshire.

The show is spread across two main halls, the assembly hall and the sports hall, along with various corridor space inbetween. Here is the main (assembly) hall:

As you can see, it's not *quite* as big as the Munich Show. But it's a friendly show where you have time to go and amble around and chat to the dealers, many of whom are not commercial - just collectors selling off a few extras to feed the habit.

You may remember from our report of the Haywards Heath show last year the successful sales tactics of young mineral dealer Joe Bruce (who at that time was working with his brother Sam, but this time only Joe attended - complete with his own advertising material...

Here is a photo of Joe Bruce with his assistant, Ian. Joe is busy waving some of the money he has made selling some (rather nice) Spanish Fluorites for £10 each. I bought one - by the end of the show quite a few had been sold.

On hearing it was my birthday, Joe grabbed some money, rushed off to the show canteen, and came back with a birthday cookie for me. Thank you Joe! He is becoming quite the expert dealer. His sales techniques are legendary, and he obviously now has an eye for a good mineral bargain to sell to us.

More from Joe later, when we exclusively reveal how far his influence of control is extending over the UK dealer scene.

Meanwhile, when not assisting Joe, Ian Bruce had his usual selection of high-quality British and Worldwide classics:

Today was no exception - he had this stunning piece from the Virtuous Lady mine (dated 1832), a combination siderite 'Box' epimorph with chalcopyrite and milky quartz crystals. It had, unsurprisingly, been sold. Piece is around 10cm across.

Paul Lowe had some interesting things - he was selling out of the new "Fluorite" special publication from Lithographie (the series that used to be known as 'Lapis Extra English'), and had a new book on Agates from the Natural History Museum as well.

On the mineral side, he had a nice couple of "eisenkeisel" quartzes (red hematite stained) from Namibia:

Another UK dealer and mindat.org contributor, Sara Giller from Crystal Vine:

And in the far end of the sports hall, British dealer Mark Wrigley from Thames Valley Minerals.

In the center of his stand was a rather impressive Indian mesolite piece - he was taking offers for this, I imagine he wasn't especially keen on taking it home!

And I'm a big fan of UK cuprites, so this Cornish cuprite stood out to me as an especially nice example.

In fact, some of Thames Valley's minerals were too good. Could there be a reason for this? I had the feeling that there was some other force at work, some other person, some powerful new dealer perhaps who was somehow connected into Thames Valley minerals, maybe a brand new mastermind taking control of the operation.

And of course, I did some investigating. And look what I found!