The TIMA Tokyo Mineral Show 2006

By Jolyon and Ida Ralph

Ida and myself were delighted to be invited to the TIMA Tokyo Mineral Show - this invitation came from Wayne Leicht of Kristalle, who has been exhibiting at this show for many years, and wanted us to experience what it is like at this mineral show on the other side of the world. As neither of us has ever been to Japan before, we jumped at the chance.

The two photographs above were taken on the Friday - the first public day of the show. The show runs from Thursday (VIP invites only) until Tuesday, and on Saturday and Sunday it is packed for much of the day.

Above the main exhibition area, in the entrance lobby for the building, a special area was put aside for a "Mineral Display". Some of the major dealers, including Crystal Classics (UK), Kristale (USA) and Hori Mineralogy (Japan) put on a display with several large display cabinets full of high-quality minerals. Although these items were available for sale, they were primarily there as a public display - almost certainly the best display of worldwide minerals ever put on at a Japanese mineral show.

In the photo below Dr. Hori of Hori Mineralogy is standing alongside his cabinet in the display.The other cabinets (in the photo above, to the left of the MinVision banner) are shared by Kristalle and Crystal Classics.

Dr Hori was showing a number of new and classic minerals. One of the newer things were these 'Trapiche Tourmaline' pieces, actually these are Uvite (coloured green by Vanadium)

The label explains the locality, however if your Japanese is a little rusty Mwinlunga is in North-Western Zambia.

When you think of Japanese minerals, the two things that immediately spring to mind are Stibnite and Japan-Law Quartz twins. Although there were plenty of Japan-law quartz twins at reasonable prices from the Japanese dealers, Stibnite was scarce (except for Chinese Stibnite). One very impressive large cabinet piece of Japanese Stibnite, 18cm tall, from the Ichinokawa mine, Ehime, Japan was returned to its homeland by Kristalle minerals.

I took an opportunity on Thursday morning, before the VIPs were allowed in, to walk around the show as it was setting up to see what was new and to talk to some old friends and meet some new ones.

Most of our show reports seem to include a picture of Alfredo Petrov who, when he isn't busy helping with the management of mindat.org, sells mostly self-collected material (or material traded with local collectors) from South America and Japan, and I see no reason why this one should be any different. Note that Alfredo's stand is placed on the stairs, which means that you can stand and admire the minerals at one end, but you have to bend down or kneel to examine them at the other end.

This is one of the rare minerals being offered by Alfredo, Roedderite, a rare K-Na cyclosilicate from Japan.

Almost exactly 50% of the dealers were from overseas - I spotted dealers from the UK, France, Germany, USA, Canada, Australia, China, Afghanistan, Burma, Indonesia, South Africa, Russia, Thailand and India at the very least. The Tokyo show has become the primary serious show for rocks and minerals in the far east.

Mineral India were one of the dealers offering new material. Some of it (such as new quartz from the Indian side of the Himalayas and some big but ugly Kyanite crystals) were interesting but not outstanding - but they did have some very fine pieces of sceptered Amethyst from a new locality.

This piece was probably the best of these, around 10-11cm wide, and was purchased by Crystal Classics at the start of the show. The full locality was given as Karur, Chennai (Madrass), Southern India.

Here is Ian Bruce from Crystal Classics looking for more Japanese mineral bargains.

A few stands were selling japanese minerals, this particular stand was run by Masutomi Geology Museum and was selling minerals collected by local collectors. Along with rainbow garnets, japan-law Quartz twins and a whole host of rare and unusual japanese species they had samples of the one japanese mineral I was looking for in particular - the rare borate species Henmilite.

This sample, around 4cm across, was one of those being sold on the stand, at a very reasonable price. The dark blue Henmilite crystals reach over 2mm. The sky-blue material is currently a subject of research, and is possiby another rare copper borate mineral. This particular piece is coming back with me to England to join my collection.

Miner K from France had two interesting specimens from Burma (Myanmar)

This is a Poudretteite crystal (4cm) from Mogok - Poudretteite is a Potassium-Sodium Borosilicate which was first found at the Poudrette Quarry at Mt Saint Hilaire, in Quebec, Canada. There has been some debate as to the origin of this material which were just labelled as 'Mogok, Burma' when only a single cut stone was reported. Now with more uncut crystals such as this coming to the market, it is clearer that these are something of great interest.

The second of the Miner K specimens was this 2cm Painite in matrix, again from Mogok, but more specifically, from a place entitled Wetloo. Painite crystals have only been found in reasonable quantities in the last few years. Until now these were all alluvial crystals free from matrix, but very recently, some of these crystals have finally showed up in matrix. Perhaps the Burmese have found the source deposit? They are, naturally, keeping things very quiet, but specimens like this are starting to appear on the market.

On the other side of the show you could have picked up one of the new Venezuelan gold specimens being offered here by Kristalle and Crystal Classics for the first time.

This specimen was 5cm across, with a rich lump of gold protruding from the Quartz matrix.

This crystalline nugget of Venezuelan Gold is about 2.5cm (1 inch) tall. It weighs 9.7g

Outside the premier mineral display in the lobby there was an incredible display of origami (folded paper) dinosaurs, along with their creator, Kazuya Matsumoto:

During the show he was sitting there folding paper to create new models based on pictures in books and magzines.

This is a paper model of a sleeping dinosaur based on a picture of a fossil of the animal.

The German dealer Gunnar Farber is a name well-known to many people on mindat. He nearly missed the show altogether because of a customs delay in clearing his minerals. Apparently there was a problem with his paperwork, and Tokyo customs wanted to look up a different import code for every single mineral species listed on his packing list. Not something that is ideal for a rare mineral dealer! His items finally arrived on thursday night in time for the main opening on Friday. Gunnar had some new finds from South America he was offering at this show:

The red crystals on this specimen (which is approx 4cm wide) are Amarantite, with blue Chalcanthite and yellow Jarosite.

This 3cm Brazilianite cluster is from a new locality in Brazil - Santa Maria, Jenipapo, Itinga, Minas Gerais - which I am told is several hundred kilometers away from the traditional source of good-quality Brazilianites in the area.

Another new find of Amethyst, this time labelled as simply from "The Sahara, Algeria" - contained many singly and doubly terminated Quartz crystals with hour-glass zoned amethystine areas. These were offered by another German dealer Horst Burkard.

Finally, Francois Lietard from France brought over a nice selection of new Chinese Stibnite which had a secondary growth of smaller thin crystals growing out of the main crystals, producing a nice 'hairy' effect.

This was the largest of these pieces, around 30cm across.

We hope to be at the Tokyo Show again in 2007 - hopefully we can see more of you at this exciting venue next year.

Jolyon & Ida