Fall Denver 2004 Show Report

September 14th-19th 

This year marked the moving of Great Basin Minerals to a prime first-floor room at the Holiday Inn show, #124!  This is a great success as the competition, by all of the dealers on the 2nd and 3rd floor, for these first-floor showrooms are fierce.  It took several years to get.  I started on the third floor, like most new dealers, and worked my way down, each year trying to get a little bit better room positioning.
Here I am proudly setting up many superb Meikle Mine barite specimens.
My finished display case!

     This year I had the honor to offer one of the largest and most dramatic matrix beryl specimen to come from the United States.  Collected in the Cryo-Genie mine (Riverside County, CA) in 2003, this amazing pegmatite specimen presented a gemmy, lustrous beryl crystal measured over 12cm wide (being light blue and pink), with the whole specimen over 25cm.  Amazingly, the piece was entirely unrepaired!!  On the cleavelandite ball, many small pink and green tourmaline pencils could be seen.  Even under the beryl and into the beautiful 14cm smoky/gemmy quartz crystal these tourmalines could be seen.  An associate helped to dig this fabulous specimen at the mine and was in the room to answer many awe-inspired questions and comments about this historic North American beryl specimen.  In the end, we were ultimately successful in helping to sell this superb specimen!
My big new Nevada score was the finest lot of Getchellites ever offered from the Getchell mine (Humboldt County, Nevada).  Tom Moore of the Mineralogical Record came by to write them up for the "What's New at Fall Denver, 2004".   I was also honored when the Smithsonian Institution acquired 2 fine specimens.   
My mixed top shelf included fine Southern California amethyst specimens, barite-on-orpiment from Twin Creeks, NV; a fine French fadden; primary acanthite crystals from Mexico; a fine calaverite from the Cresson mine, Colorado; 2 superb faceted benitoites; Chinese malachite stalactite; Bi-colored viviantite from Idaho; Superb goethite from Colorado; Japan-Law twins from Peru; A superb TN of nagyagite from Romania; and a 24 carat bi-colored (with shiller) sunstone from Oregon. The next shelf down displayed: Gold-coated Platinum crystals from Russia; Gold in Scarn slab from Ecuador; crystallized golds from the famous Eagles Nest mine; Meikle mine millerite cabinet specimens and a few nice Olinghouse golds.
With the discovery of the Rust Bucket pocket at the Meikle mine, back in 2002, deeply-colored, world-class golden barites are around for a short while. This top shelf displayed only superb Meikles, all the way!!
Here is a very colorful blue-green "Cryo-Blue" tourmaline from the Cryo-Genie mine.
My finished showroom on opening day!
During the show, we had many great conversations with our friends.  Here we are visiting with Rudy Tschernich (Rice NW Mineral Museum Curator), Rock Currier (Jewel Tunnel Imports) and James Zigras.
Sometimes we were busy!
With the show over, it's time to teardown.  With the room back to normal, I am off to the hotsprings!

 

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