2 This is the booth where I purchasesd the deep green jade pieces from British Columbia. The jade is really as green green as the photo shows.
3 Mexican obsidian. Polished, and wonderful to look at.
4 We are here at one of the motel venues. I have my long sleeved shirt on my shoulder cause it got HOT!
5 Big, beautiful piece of malachite.
6 Crystals, and carved crystal.
7 This is for all of you who wish you had a crystal ball. How big do you want it? They come in all sizes, and all variations of inclusions.
8 These are crystal balls folks.
9 We took a side trip to the copper mining town of Bisbee AZ. It is a former mining town, and is really a kick, with its narrow streets, and houses built going up the sides of the mountain.
10 Here is the post office for my postal buddies to see.
11 The town is full of wonderful artsy shops. This is where we found Glen's rock hound guy.
12 He is so perfect! Absolutely captures the heart and soul of a rock hound. "Judy, I recognized him IMMEDIATELY, he looks just lik..." View Comments...
15 This is an amonite. Check the size of this puppy. You can see a bottle of hand lotion behind it to sort of put it into perspective. That price tag is not readable, but it is in the thousands. "Wonderful example of an ammonite from Alberta Canada...." View Comments...
16 This is the main fossil room at the Inn Suites motel. These dealers told me that the huge fossil is on its way to a Houston museum after the show.
They aren't real dinosaur bones. They go all over and take castings of real bones, and then come home and construct the dinosaur out of the castings. They have to do this because fossil diggers rarely find one complete dino.
Once the castings are done, they can mass produce dinosaurs. You can order one if you want. I'm not sure how much they are, but you'd better have a lot of space for it.
17 The parking lot behind the motel is full of crystals.
18 And azurites.
19 Here is a nice crystal for you! HUGE.
20 Just a view of the miles and miles of tents to visit. Every one has marvelous things to look at.
21 This is a tent at one of the motels. It was raining a bit in the am here.
22 Crystals and carvings from all over the world.
23 A lot of these dealers cater to the "healy feelies" as Glen calls them. My buddy calls them "woo woos"
24 The woo woos are funny. You can see them wandering among the crystals with their hands over the crystals and their eyes closed. They are getting the "vibes."
I saw one that I liked. It was rather large, and 1600.00. Yikes! Well.....it had good color, and the little points were all intact, no smashing down of the points.
Needless to say...we didn't get it. :)
28 All sizes!
29 How big do you want it?
30 The yellow ones are amethyst that have been heat treated to make citrine.
31 Here is a lady, and you can see how big that one cathedral is.
32 A pair. There I am dwarfed by that thing. Sold as a pair... the crystals are much more pricey. Check out the yellow one. Citrine, or heat treated amethyst.
49 This is the Manning Mansion, one of the jewelry venues. This is more of what we are used to....except most of the dealers sell stuff to make jewelry, not finished jewelry.
50 There are some finished pieces here, but usually, they illustrate what you can do with the components once you buy.
I bought a shell focal bead in here, but it was sure hard to keep my hands off the wonderful lampwork beads here.
51 This is the shell bead I bought. Hard to tell, but the bead is solid. You can see right through it though.
52 The bead is an amber color, and it has lavender all through it. I hope to make it the focal bead for a purple jade necklace. The purple jade is another purchase I made in Tucson.
53 Here we are back at Electric Park.
54 These are so interesting to look at. This is also an illustration of why amethyst is such a reasonalbly priced gem. It is everywhere.
55 The chairs are few and far between, and people get sooooo exhausted. I definitely abused my back on this trip.
56 Alpha Supply has just about everything the lapidarist needs. We bought a jewelers desk here, and Glen bought a bell jar, and some saw blades. All for working up our opals.
I also got some bead boxes, a gem scoop, some glue and other supply stuff.
57 Love these bead boxes. The little dividers inside stay put. They don't lift up, so your beads don't get mixed up in there.
58 Red beryl from Utah.
59 These are tents at Electic Park. See??? Even cotton candy.
60 I KNOW what I'm thinking here. Oh Lord....I'm not sure my back can take too many more of these tents. Oh well, just take the Vicodin, and keep going!
62 I just had to take a photo of this lady. Her bag of pop corn is bigger than she is!!!!!!!
63 The stuff that is in this boat thing is raw lapis. It goes for about 50.00 per pound.
64 Looks like antique buddahs and things.
65 Smithsonite and auracalcite. Need one? There are hundreds here.
66 This is Jeff Scovil, a friend of Glen's. Not sure of the woman's name. Anyway, Jeff is the cream of the crop mineral photographer. His stuff is on all the mineral book covers, and most of the fantastic mineral photos are his.
67 He is set up in the Inn Suites here. This is his set up, and he gave me lots of good ideas on photography. I talked to him about the nasty reflections that rhinestones give off, and he was most helpful.
Now, all I have to do is buy more camera paraphernalia and one thing I would love to do...is hook the camera up to the PC. Wouldn't that be great?
68 This is amazonite and smoky quartz from Colorado. This speciman is from Colorado. It is 20,000.00.
69 Here is another pricey specimen. Expensive, because it is rare, and also a beautiful piece. We bought a specimen from this dealer. Next photo shows our specimen.
70 This is our specimen of amazonite and smoky quartz. We bought it on the first day this dealer offered his stuff for sale, and it's a good thing we got it when we did. His stuff went fast.
This one is way smaller than the 20,000.00 piece but it was only 200.00. Yay!
71 Malachite and azurite and mimetite. Holy cow! I hope I'm spelling all this right.
72 These are fluorites. I really like these minerals. They come in all colors.
73 This is a green smithsonite.
74 Purple quartz sceptors. These are tiny, and on display here. We are back in the civic auditorium now.
75 More sceptors.
76 This is more green fluorite. A darker green, from England.
77 Elbaite on quartz. It is a form of tourmaline.
78 The red stuff in the middle is rhodochrosite. Check out the prices. Yowie!
79 Beautiful aquamarines.
80 These are small gold specimens. The Kilian Collection is a dealer at the show who has the most spectacular specimens, and also the highest prices. Most of his gold specimens sold at this Tucson show.
81 The largest one, second from left, is 9500.00 and is called a nugget. That is to say....not so very big.
82 These are pyrite cubes, and the dark one on the right is stibnite.
83 This is the line at the Electiric Park again. Just one of the tents. This tent is popular because the prices are way low, and they have a little bit of everything in here.
84 This is a display of Gaspite from Colorado. It is a neat green color. Sort of like green jade but better. I bought some strands of this last year and made two necklaces out of it when we went to the opal mine. They are wonderful!
85 These are some gaspite cabs. I bought one last year, and tried to have it made into a ring this year, but the only setting was 200.00 and I wasn't too thrilled with it anyway.
86 This is me at our opal mine wearing the necklace I just made. Gaspite. Stupid mouth on me....I don't know WHAT makes me do that when a camera comes close.
87 The necklace I made. It is 17 1/2" long with gold findings.
88 A close up of those gaspite beads. I just love this stone, not too much of it around either.
89 This is sooooo neat. The Tucson Gem and Mineral Society puts on the show at the civic auditorium, and they have among other things...this cool happening for kids.
90 They get to go into this area, and they learn all kinds of things with the help of the volunteers from the TCMS. They even get an egg carton, and get to put rocks into the carton to take home.
91 Brazilian agate nodulues. The largest one here is over a foot in diameter.
92 Here's a cutie. Only 1182.75. :)
93 Same thing, only this one is a geode, and only 593.00.
94 These are bracelets on elastic that I bought for fun, and for my daughter to pick one. She picked the one in the right foreground.
They are made from gem chips.
The wooden hand is from the display guy with the wooden stuff. I'll use that with my jewel photos for the site.
95 This is the little amethyst stone the lady gave me to give to Brian. He loves it.
96 Elephant ivory earrings to go with a necklace that I bought from Erik.
97 This is Chinese green fluorite. Just a small piece, but the squares are perfect, and it is really a good color.
98 One more photo of that piece. It was only 20.00.
99 I couldn't resist these. They are small, but they are Mamoth ivory earrings. It just blows me away to think that I own a piece of Mamoth.
100 These are two pieces of Montana agates that Glen bought. He will cut and polish them, and make them into jewelry.
101 All bubby and frothy. Prehnite from India.
102 It's about 8" across, and I think it was 25.00.
103 This is a huge glass ball for Sarah. She has a blue bedroom, and she loves these paperweight things.
104 I bought this natural turquoise necklace and earring set after searching all over Tucson for the perfect one.
105 It is really hard to tell natural turquoise from the man made stuff, and the treated stuff. You need Glen along, and you need proof from the dealer, which she offered.
This was pricey at 200.00
106 An agate bead. I'll use it as a focal on a necklace.
107 Another focal bead, the hole runs across the top. These two focals are about 1 3/4" across.
108 Here are some of the beads I bought. Soon to become necklaces.
110 Here is a necklace amd earring set that I made last year at the opal mine. I was digging with Glen, and needed a day off, sooooo, this is what I did.
111 This necklace is 19 1/2" long and has gold findings.
112 I love this stuff. It is labradorite. The bluer stones are also labradorite. They are going into a necklace with some neat lampwork beads that I got last year.
113 These beads will go with the Labradorite, and I will also use them with the green chalcedony and some garnets that I bought.
114 Some tourmaline strands and some turquoise. The tourmalines are destined to become a bracelet.
115 Check out those huge chalcedony beads.
116 Glen is going to poke a hole in this Chalcedony sparkly piece, and I will use it as a focal along with those huge chalcedony beads.
117 Here are two of Glen's new books. The author of the Chinese book is the person who sold us the book and he signed it for us.
118 And heeeeere's the author. I can't read the signature, but he is Guanghua Liu. He is set up at the Inn Suites, selling his book and also a bunch of Chinese Minerals.
119 This is some green fluorite that we got from Mr. Liu. 160.00
120 Dinosaur bone slabs. Soon to be polished and cut.
121 These are my Taiya River acquisitions this year. Marcia Cook is the designer and she does SUCH good work. I need to sell my house to afford one of her pieces, so I settled on these. They are wonderful, 22k gold.
122 I love this one, it's gypsum from Australia. Not special, according to Glen, but I think it looks like a flower. Not pricey, either...18.00.
123 This is a Lapis ring. I got the stone last year, and had it set this year. It's a huge ring. :)
124 This is a thick focal bead that's going on a necklace made with that purple jade. It is lepidonite, and has lots of sparklies in it. The didn't show up in the photo too well.
125 We got a couple of these arc mineral holders. Some specimens look great in these, and of course...we got another book.
126 This is fluorite, a large piece, that is purple and yellow. Really pretty.
127 Glen bought this thing in Quartzsite. It is a saw to cut the opals. Can't wait to use it.
128 A small stibnite, this one is very fragile.
129 Stibnite. This one is rather large and veeeeeerrrrry fragile. Both stibnites are from China.
130 These are my Valentine. Sunstone earrings from Oregon. We drive past this mine on the way to our opal mine in Nevada.
131 This specimen is really tiny. Amethyst sceptor twin.
