Tucson 2018 - February 6th and 7th
Last Updated: 7th Feb 2018
By Jolyon Ralph
We'll be visiting the
Miner's Co-op and visiting the
Granada Avenue Mineral Show along with the
Fine Mineral International building and returning to any of the places that needed another visit. The Wednesday will be a set-up day so we're combining both days into a single report.
Click here to go back to the previous day report
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exaggerated prices, especially on gold 
Yeah, and especially on those Rhodo's... But they sure are beautiful!! 
Yep those Rhodo prices are in the clouds.
I guess people don’t understand the mineral market if they complain about the prices. Well, if they sell those Rhodo's for those prices, good for them. But I seriously doubt they'll sell for those prices... Perhaps more of wishful thinking or a starting point.. However, I'd love to see how many they sell during the show and for how much to see more of a market price for those... Prove me right or prove me wrong, either way I feel those prices are astronomical. I'm not an economist nor do I pretend to, I'm a commercial insurance guy and pricing is highly regulated and greatly influences what we can charge. Minerals are a totally different type of product.
But, I recall in the Tucson show I attended back in 2012, I saw some rhodo slices but cannot for the life of me remember how much they were. But I don't recall thinking, gee, those are outrageous prices like I do now. In fact, I remember wanting to buy one but my budget was already exceeded by then. Makes me believe they were much cheaper, but not worse in quality... I want to thank everyone for the continuing coverage of the show. This year was a vast improvement to last year’s coverage as we have seen a wide variety of minerals from different venues, not just from the “High-end dealers”. This year’s coverage was not: “Here is a gold”, “here is an aquamarine”, “here is a kunzite”, “here is a tourmaline”, etc.
Flashy specimens are nice, but the majority of Mindat folks, I believe would prefer seeing rare minerals, affordable minerals, or minerals from unusual localities. This year’s photographic coverage of the Tucson show proved that deals can still be found and from a variety of venues. Looking at the pictures of the show, there definitely was some material that I would have purchased had I attended the various shows.
This was probably one of the better, if not the best coverage of the shows you have done to date.
I guess people don’t understand the mineral market if they complain about the prices.
I disagree, there are plenty of threads both on Mindat and on the Mineral Forum about the economics of mineral specimens and how as a whole how they have begun to rise. I am certainly allowed to complain about a price of a mineral specimen if I think the asking price is outrageous and if I’m informed on what is an appropriate value for the specimen based on similar quality of what I have seen from that locality.
For the Argentina rhodochrosite example I haven’t seen much of this material, so I wouldn’t know what would be an appropriate price or not (and therefore wouldn’t complain). On the other hand, I noticed in one of the pictures shown there was a calcite twin from Anderson, Indiana that was priced 250 dollars. I have seen similar specimens at my local shows that were priced under thirty or forty dollars for the same quality specimen and size. I would certainly have the “authority” to complain that the price for that particular specimen is a bit outrageous, because I have seen quite a few specimens from that locality.
Obviously, the more you are informed, the likelihood of finding an excellent quality specimen within your budget is better than someone who is not.
Again, thanks for the continuing coverage and look forward to seeing pictures from the rest of the show.
I guess people don’t understand the mineral market if they complain about the prices.
Jolyon & Katya Ralph
7th Feb 2018 5:54pm
I guess you never have seen prices of Brusson gold here in Italy ;-) 
