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by Jolyon Ralph
After a hectic 3-day visit to Denver for the 2007 mineral shows, I am now stopping for a week in Toronto before flying home, and my first duty is to bring you a more thought-through report on the great things on show at Denver.
I've already shown you some of the pieces from the Philadelphia collection, but after more time to go back and photograph some of the pieces I really wanted to show you, I'm going to start with a few more photos of this excellent material:
First, a Chalcophyllite from the Potrerillos mine in Chile, offered by Kristalle & Crystal Classics.
This next fabulous piece is a cronstedite on siderite from Romania - an absolutely stunning example for the species. Again, this was from Kristalle/Crystal Classics.
Continuing round the cabinets at Kristalle/Crystal Classics - they had a sizeable and impressive group of Descloizite crystals from Namibia:
And continuing the african theme, this incredible 7cm group of Hopeite crystals from the Kabwe mine (or as it was called at the time this was collected, the Broken Hill mine) in Zambia. Hopeite is a zinc phosphate.
Another classic represented in the Philadelphia material were these four stunning large pieces of Japanese Stibnite. In classic collections, Japan was the source of fabulous stibnite, long before the material from Romania, South America and China came on the market.
Next door Collector's Edge were displaying a small selection from their half of the Philadelphia collection - including many American classics. For those of you allergic to micromounts, you might appreciate this monster calcite on matrix from the Yellowstone National Park (where collecting is of course now banned).
Another larger piece was this impressive Chalcoalumite from Bisbee - the light blue coating on Azurite.
And lastly from Collector's Edge, my personal favourite from this display, this large piece of malachite and azurite covered in sparkling micro dioptase crystals from the Goodsprings district of Nevada.
Moving on, there were new and interesting things to be found other than the Philadelphia specimens. Evan Jones had some new finds from mexico, firstly a selection of fine new malachite pseudomorphs after azurite from Chihuahua, mined within the last year:
And some fabulous new samples of green Fluorite on Sphalerite and Galena from Naica, Mexico, which were collected some time this year - here Evan is holding one of the best examples of this new find.
And while I was with Evan, Mark Candee from Canyon Colors came in and showed me a couple of flats of new Azurites from the Omega Mine, south of Tucson, Arizona. They form little balls of crystalline azurite, reminiscent of material from Bisbee or even Chessey in France. Here are a couple of examples:
Moving on, Dan Weinrich had his usual selection of fine minerals, and a few that caught my eye included these two:
Note how these two specimens are labelled Beryl and Quartz, rather than 'Emerald' and 'Amethyst'. Full marks to Dan for being mineralogically precise with his labelling!
I managed to make a quick visit to the Holiday Inn show to meet up with Rock Currier and Alfredo Petrov for a chat, both of whom are long-time supporters of mindat.org. Alfredo showed me his usual mix of mineral curiosities, including this Hydroxylapatite on a string!
The string is passed through natural channels in the crystal. Another piece that caught my eye was this pebble of water-worn Baddeleyite (Zirconium Oxide)
And finally, for the Denver report of 2007, here is Jorge from Patagonia Minerals, who had even more amazing pieces of the Hematite pseudomorphs after Magnetite from Argentina than we'd seen before, including this stunner which looks like some kind of 'Star Wars' ray gun.
