Sunset in the desert.
Two of the really large venues that seem to have something for all interested buyers are the 22nd 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 22nd 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.
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.
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