Denver Show 2006 Photo Report

A photo report by Jolyon and Ida Ralph

 

 

The annual September Denver Gem and Mineral shows span across many of the shows and halls in Denver - overall it's the second biggest gem and mineral show season in the US. We only had time to visit two of the venues in our short visit - the Denver Gem and Mineral Show at the Expo Center (the Clubs' show), and the Holiday Inn show (a free entry event organized by Marty Zinn). The majority of the mineral dealers were at one (or both) of these events.

 

 

 

Our first stop was the Kristalle room at the Holiday Inn - and while we were there we bumped into David von Bargen (on the right), professional mineralogist and one of the mindat.org editorial team. And it didn't take us long to find another mindat.org manager...

 

 

Here's Alfredo Petrov, star of pretty much every overseas show report I have ever done, holding a rather large bolivian Stibnite. He's come back from Bolivia recently with some great new minerals, including colour-changing monazites and this, rather honestly described piece of Phosphophyllite:

 

 

Up one flight of stairs on the third floor was Bill Hawes - we had a great chat about zeolite collecting amongst other things, and Bill showed me some new Stilbite specimens that he collected in New Zealand.

 

 

Bill did look like he was all kitted out to abseil out the hotel window and hunt his own breakfast - but he's passionate about rocks and collecting and we could have probably talked for hours. Here's a close-up of his New Zealand Stilbite:

 

 

The full location for this is Mount Upcot, Middlehurst, Southland, New Zealand.

Bill was also offering some amazingly crafted stone bugs made from local gemstone material:

 

 

Downstairs on the ground floor, we visited the room for The Collector's Edge - this is of course their 'hometown show', so they had some exciting new things to show:

Recently, some very exciting calcites have been coming out of China, very similar to classic German calcites - and Collector's Edge had a great selection:

 

 

But the biggest surprise from Collector's Edge was so very nearly overlooked! A selection of new Rhodochrosites, some with purple fluorite associations:

 

 

And yes, they're from China! Associations are very similar to Sweet Home mine, and prices for these new finds were very reasonable.

Working our way upstairs again, we visited Chris Tucker Minerals, who have been mining Vanadinite in Montana now for several seasons, this years finds include this magnificent piece:

 

 

 

We left the Holiday Inn and travelled to the main show at the Expo Center:

 

 

The show is in two halls with some of the dealers in their own rooms in the corridors to one side. These corridors lead to two other halls, one with the Fossil show, and one with a trade-only gem/bead/wholesale show. The photo above shows part of the main gem and mineral hall, with the display cabinets on the left hand side, and some dealers on the right.

You had to move quickly around the show or you were chased by Mr Bones, a tall guy wearing a dinosaur exoskeleton - cleverly articulated so he could pretend to close the dinosaur's head around any small child too slow to escape him.

 

 

Kristalle and Crystal Classics were again sharing a room at the main show, with seven large display cabinets full of simply stunning rocks.

 

 

You can see a good view of many of these in the video preview we put online two days ago, but here are some photos showing some of the items in the Kristalle/Crystal Classics cabinets:

First, as selection of top quality US native copper specimens:

 

 

Do you like Los Lamentos Wulfenite? I do - and they had some killer pieces: Here are three of the several Los Lamentos pieces they were offering:

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were also some newer finds that stood out, such as this Pakistani Brookite specimen:

 

 

Size of this specimen is about 3cm across.

And this is unusual, a large complex Wulfenite crystal on matrix from the Congo:

 

 

And, to show that Crystal Classics still have the best stock of British classic minerals by far, they didn't just put out one Cumbrian Calcite twin, they had the whole family:

 

 

 

Next door were Collector's Edge again - no coincidence in their closeness to Crystal Classics and Kristalle, as the three companies have been cooperating on buying and distributing collections recently, including the Norman and Roslyn Pellman collection which included many of the top pieces in the cabinets of all three companies at the show. Here is one of the Pellman pieces, an Afghani Elbaite:

 

 

Also displaying good Tourmalines at the show, but this time Liddicoatite from Burma, was Dan Weinrich, he had an enviable collection of top-quality pieces - he talks in detail about these on our video report, so check this out if you haven't seen it yet:

 

 

He also had one of the best chinese Acanthites I've seen recently - again this is on the video:

 

 

 

Mineral Classics and The Arkenstone were sharing a room across the hall from Collector's Edge - and they both had their usual high quality stock. Here Brian Kosnar of Mineral Classics is showing a huge matrix Vauxite specimen recently obtained from Bolivia:

 

 

Rob Lavinsky at the Arkenstone has many great rocks, but the one that intrigued me was this 'spine' of cobaltian calcite:

 

 

Next door to them was Stuart Wilensky - he had a small number of very good quality specimens - one that caught my eye was this great large chinese Bournonite on quartz:

 

 

Equally impressive was this group of spinel-twinned copper crystals:

 

 

 

Although there were many, many other dealers at the show, our report can't go on forever - so we'll end with some new finds from Canadian collector-dealers, Rod and Helen Tyson. They've had a good season collecting in the Yukon:

 

 

A number of individual Lazulite crystals and small groups with or without matrix, some with very gemmy green areas.

They also had some other phosphates from the Yukon:

 

 

And, heading over to British Columbia, they found some superb groups of Brewsterite crystals:

 

 

Finally, we'll end with some of the displays:

Irv Brown displays a selection of mineral specimens featured on magazine covers:

 

 

Keith Proctor had his usual excellent display of (mostly) gem minerals, including the fantastic 'Big Red' Sweet Home mine Rhodochrosite:

 

 

We could go on, and on, and on - there is so much to see and so little time! We enjoyed the Denver Show and we hope that you liked our video and photo reports.

Our next report will be from the Bakewell show in the UK (October 7th), and after that the Munich show in November. If you're going to either show, look out for us and say hello!