HOWLING AND CELEBRATING TUCSON 2026

 

Just howlin’ at the moon celebrating Tucson 2026.

There really is not a good way to describe the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show (the official show) except to say mind boggling and overpowering.

A view of the main floor of the Convention Center from the second floor Micromount Playroom.

My best estimate is that well over 300 vendor and display “booths” were created and occupied, most on the main floor and a large side room. The vendors had the traditional tables and display cases while the displays were set up in the types of cases one sees at most mineral shows. The major difference is that many of the cases are large (longer) than most traditional show cases. The displays were created by a multitude of rock and mineral clubs, companies, and individuals. There are a number of “Best XXX Awards” given out each year and cases often try to display minerals that correspond to the yearly theme, the 2026 Red, White & Blue—A Celebratory & Patriotic Feast.

The Tucson Show is held during the second week of February, Thursday through Sunday, at the Tucson Convention Center, a large building in the center of downtown. Ten-dollar parking has gone by the wayside and has jumped to $15. Unfortunately, “payment to the parking attendant in the booth” has also disappeared and a much longer and more complicated smart phone system is now in place.  Admission to the show is $15 with discounts for children and seniors (one day only). Several “gem show shuttles” operate an established schedule haul participants from outlying venues and motels to the Center.

The organization Friends of Mineralogy hosts a symposium on Saturday and Sunday mornings with a variety of presentations including:

·       John Stuart McCloy, Cuprorivaite: Egyptian Blue, humanity’s first inorganic pigment.

·       Johan Maertens, Heaven and Hell in Ohio [about Celestine].

·       Donald A. Dallaire, New Hampshire’s Red, White & Blue Minerals.

·       John Rakovan, Pleochroism in minerals.

·       Markus Raschke, An ocean within – new insights into structure and phases of water in minerals.

·       Bruce Kelley, Finding Art in Minerals: How an interest in color and form ignited my passion for minerals.

·       John Stuart McCloy, Cuprorivaite: Egyptian Blue, humanity's first inorganic pigment.

·       Johan Maertens, Heaven and Hell in Ohio [about Celestine.

·       Donald Dallaire, New Hampshire's Red, White & Blue Minerals,

·       John Rakovan, Pleochroism in Minerals.

·       Markus Raschke, An Ocean Within – New Insights into Water in Minerals.

The Author Roe Memorial Micromount Symposium was held on Friday morning with the following three presentations:

·       Museums, Minerals and Micromounts by Nadine Gabriel (via Zoom from Mineralogy at the Natural History Museum, London).

·       Minerals of the Chilean Mineralogical Expedition, Sam Gordon and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia by Patrick E. Haynes.

Type Mineralogy of Oregon: History, Revisions, and Puzzles by Julian C. Gray.

·      

After the Symposium micromounters flocked back to the playroom to swap and identify micros.

This great display with red, white and blue minerals was put together by members of the Young Mineral Collectors.

 

 

 

Each year I am fascinated by the displays of native silver, most of which comes from the mines at Kongsberg, Norway) producing for 350+ years).

As for colored crystals it is easy for me to pick this beryl variety aquamarine from Goand Mine, Skardu, Pakistan.

What a thrill for an ole paleontologist to hoist a mammoth tusk (Alaska).

And I leave you with two contrasting photos: Mexican Poppies from my temp home in Tucson, and my back yard in Wisconsin.

A SNAPSHOT OF 22ND STREET AND KINO IN TUCSON

 

 Sunset in the desert.

Two of the really large venues that seem to have something for all interested buyers are the 22^nd Street Show with about 337 vendors, ~300+ in a single LONG tent, and the Kino Show along south I 10. The latter venue has 220 vendors situated in two large tents and several smaller open shelters. It is just difficult to explain how much “stuff” these vendors have “for sale.” Both venues sell items ranging from mineral “hand specimens’ (few micromounts and mostly rather common minerals) to brass bells and cups to southwestern style pottery to fox pelts to really large amethyst cathedrals to vertebrate  fossils (both real and mostly fake) to expensive gemstone rings and cheap jewelry baubles to everything in between, and also much material seemingly unrelated to the mineral realm.

 

The 22^nd Street Show is essentially housed in one LONG tent. Notice parked cars for scale.

With a crowd of shoppers, one really cannot see the far end of the tent.

Impressive vertebrate fossils. Quite respective teeth of a large reptile could make short work of me!

If not poked full of holes by a large toothy predator in the Mesozoic, then watch out for a charging, scary looking Wooly Rhinoceros in the Pleistocene Ice Age.

Actually a nice beaded dinosaur seems cuter and more friendly.

Cures for a variety of ailments that are unavailable in your local drug store.

 

Fifteen bucks for celestine geodes.

A slab (micrite, tiny carbonate crystals of aragonite or calcite) containing fish from the Green River Formation near Kemmerer, Wyoming.

During about a six-million-year time span (~50 Ma) fish, and a large variety of animals and plants, inhabited the waters of a large subtropical lake system centered around the Unita Mountains in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Generally known as the Green River Lake System, intermontane basins created by the Laramide Orogeny contained three major lakes: Lake Unita in the Piceance and Unita Basins in Utah and Colorado; Fossil Lake in the Fossil Basin of Wyoming; and Lake Gosiute in the Green River and Bridger Basins of Wyoming. At times, seemingly interconnected, the lakes were home to a variety of bony fish whose remains are displayed in museums, rock/mineral shops, and art galleries around the world; however, Fossil Lake, the smallest of the lakes in the System, seems to have the richest flora and fauna. The famous Fossil Butte National Monument is located in Fossil Basin. Several decades ago I spent much time in Fossil Basin working on my dissertation. I had discovered a vertebrate fauna in the Fowkes Formation, a Bridger Formation equivalent, that was part of the end cycle of the Lakes System.  

 

It seems that only a few booths had good displays of minerals that caught my eye; Labradorite was one. Note the $1100 price tag on a single specimen.

Kunzite from Afghanistan at $3 gram. Must be a newer find as I noticed similar displays at perhaps 12 other vendors.

How about a nice beaded crab?

And speaking of beads---for sale everywhere.

After a short time most of the jewelry venues look the same!

What we have here is a failure to state the truth---yep a dye job.

 

  

The Kino Show is the “master” of outdoor shows with a couple of large tents thrown in.

Could not get a smile out of me with these non-appealing rocks.

 

Trade a fox skin for a Benjamin?

       

My five buck minerals: fluorite from Quebec, Canada, and  zeolites from the Deccan Traps in India. Each hand size.

 

Take a marble size lapis, $2, from Afghanistan.

 

An evening off to attend the University of Arizona softball game.

 

Every evening from the patio watching the last rays of the sun strike the Catalina Mountains.