RUBY & SPINAL: TUCSON GEM SHOW REPORTS: 22nd STREET

The 22^nd Street Show consists of a very large tent-like structure that contains in excess of 100 individual vendors.  Most of these sellers have large “booths” containing several tables—more “big-time” vendors rather than “mom and pop” operations.  I spent nearly the entire day perusing rocks, minerals, fossils, beads, equipment, and a wide variety of “lots of things related to our hobby.”  I particularly enjoyed some fabulous dinosaur casts made available by Triebold Paleontology headquartered in Woodland Park, Colorado.  Triebold also operates a museum known as the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource.  If readers might be traveling through Woodland Park, take a break and visit this nifty museum.

 

Triebold Paleontology: A "bone-headed" dinosaur.

Triebold Paleontology: White River Group mammals from the South Dakota (maybe Nebraska) badlands.

Triebold Paleontology: Daspletosaurus, a tyrannosaur collected from the Late Cretaceous Judith River Formation, Montana.

Ceratopsian dinosaur of Late Cretaceous age.  Note the horn and frill in the rear of skull.

Triebold Paleontology:  Saurodon, a fish collected from the Niobrara Formation (Chalk Beds), western Kansas.  Note the elongated predentary bone (lower jaw).

The 22^nd Street venue also holds some of the “stars” associated with the TV show The Prospectors.  Amanda and Travis Anderson had a quite large venue selling mostly Pikes Pikes and Mt. Antero specimens. The Busey family was present and Dwayne Hall. All seemed to be busy signing autographs on posters. 

Dwayne Hall of The Prospectors holds court.

Travis and Amanda Anderson and their booth; a wide variety of Pikes Peak minerals for sale.

A couple of other vendors had large displays of Green River, Wyoming, fish and some beautiful palm fronds.  There was a nice display (and sale) of Solenhofen (Germany) fossils.  Opal was in abundance and some of the cuts were really nice, but quite expensive.  Numerous jewelry vendors were up and running with prices ranging from $10 earrings or pendants to blue sapphire rings selling for five figures.  It was just a nice day wandering around and sometimes talking to friendly vendors.

These two skulls show a new use for Arkansas quartz crystals!

I ran onto a vendor selling specimens of red ruby and pink-red spinel and decided I really need one of each-$5 per specimen.  Their colors contrast nicely with the white marble matrix.  From what the vendor told me, all of his gems come from Pakistan in an area named the Hunza Valley The gem deposit are located in rocks (metamorphic ocean platform carbonates) that were modified when proto-India banged into the Asian continent during the Himalayan mountain building events.

A nice modified octahedron crystal of ruby from the Hunza Valley in Pakistan.  I could not pick up the correct color in this photomicrograph;  however, it is a nice "ruby red." Front width, across the base, is ~5 mm.

Photomicrograph of dark pink spinel em-placed in white marble with a smaller crystal of gold-brown phlogopite.  Width of larger crystal ~5 mm.

Photomicrograph, pink specimen of spinel.  Length (up-down) ~ 1 cm.

Photomicrograph, small crystal of spinel with faces while large specimen is "massive."  Length of small crystal ~2 mm.

A previous Blog (11/7/12) detailed information about ruby and spinel.

PYROPHYLLITE: TUCSON GEM SHOW REPORTS: MINERS CO-OP

My next daily journey took me to the Miners Co-op Rock Show, a venue now in its second year.  Many of the Co-op vendors were once at the Kino venue; however, the Kino soccer fields are now off limits to sellers and many migrated to this new area.  I enjoy the Miners Co-op since it is the “genuine thing” of small-time vendors selling from tents and pickup beds or piles emplaced on tarps with their small camping trailers circling the area.  A tamale vendor wanders through the tents around lunch time and an older model pickup drives around selling water from a large tank in the bed.  Mom and pop operations at their finest.  In addition, I recognized some of the vendors as members of the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society, while others were from nearby towns.

The tents often were not large enough to cover the specimens on the tables from the massive weekend rains.

Large specimens were often just placed on large plastic tarps.

I love the mixture of minerals, jewelry, used lapidary equipment, and whatever “for sale” at a variety of venues.  Note the straw placed around the booths after the recent rains.

I really do not like to observe the sale of Native American artifacts like there pot shards. 

My “$5 or less” mineral of the day is pyrophyllite, actually a “real buy” at $1.  I have sort of been fascinated by this aluminum silicate hydroxide [Al₂(Si₄O₁₀)(OH)₂] since first observing the radiating masses coming out of Graves Mountain, Georgia.  Although the best collectable specimens are these aggregates of radiating needles, pyrophyllite also occurs as massive grains and folliated laminar masses.  The silicate layers give it a nice cleavage.  It is a very soft mineral, ~1.5-2.0 (Mohs), with a pearly luster, somewhat transparent in the non-massive form, and found in a variety of earth-tone colors: brown, green, gray-white, brown-yellow, gray. 

Radiating silver-brown rosettes of pyrophyllite from Graves Mountain, Lincoln County, Georgia.  Width ~4.5 cm.

Pyrophyllite is isomorphous with talc and almost has identical physical properties; both are monoclinic, however, talc has magnesium substituting for the aluminum.

Pyrophyllite may be found in a few hydrothermal rocks; however, most occurrences are in low grade metamorphic rocks where it usually is an alteration product of kyanite [Al₂SiO₅].  The Graves Mountain specimens are especially attractive stellate aggregates.