Late to bed and up with the lark, is the usual routine at Munich Shows and today was no different.
Our Hotel breakfast was excellent, very unhealthy and would set anyone up for the day.
A quick ride on the U-bahn and we were back in the Halls and set up was well underway with floors being swept and final additions being made to cabinets.
It is at this stage at the Show that you need to go around again as so much has appeared and will continue to appear throughout the day.
Very Handsome Scolecite from Nasik, India
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We spent most of the morning mooching about, meeting people and discussing rocks.
As TVM is currently mineralogically fully charged, we decided that this time Munich would not be a buying trip.
This was never going to last as there are always things you dont have or are a little different.
Also despite the challenged time for new finds, fresh material does always seem to surface. Ramos Minerals of Peru had just unpacked some flats of incredibly gemmy pastel (pink and mauve) fluorite from Huanzala Mine, Ancash.
We had already missed the smaller pieces but I couldn't resist one floater, circa 6cm
Flats of fluorite - sold in under 10 minutes!
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Fluorite - Huanzala Mine (my piece in the centre)
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Where there is a shortage of new material, old "classics" and standards will always be ready to fill the gaps in most displays.
One French dealer were talking to had an impressive array of 50 year old Congalese purple pink and green minerals, plus some cabinet buster specimens from Europe.
Fluorite - Allenheads, Weardale
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And this piece from Les Farges.
Les Farges Pyromorphite (France)
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When we see a piece from Les Farges George and I always reminisce the sales pitch we were once given..
"Les Farges pyromorphite, you won't get any more of that, the mine's a car park now, don't you know."
Maybe we have been doing this job too long!
Until I talked him out of it, George wanted to look for some carrollite, however we did find ourselves in front of a Congalese seller with a super array of locality minerals. Mostly malachite and some cobaltoan pinks, but he did have this tray of chrysocolla "buttons".
Probably not the most intesting mineral, but unusual and aesthetic and not to be swallowed.
Chrysocolla - DRC
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George spotted these superbly brilliant facetted quartz stones in a Swiss seller's case.
Facetted Quartz - Rock Crystal & Smoky, Switzerland
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This stand of excellent Romanian minerals caught my eye. 15+ years ago Romanian sellers competed for stand space with the Moroccans and Chinese with boxes of new finds.
Nowadays Romanian minerals now only appear from old stock or collections, and the really good pieces have gone up in price considerably.
Table of Romanian Minerals
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Carrying on around the Hall we stopped to look at the "new" UK Mining Ventures display of minerals from Volodarsk, Ukraine.
There has been a lot of publicity for the new mining operation and some impressive finds, so we had to see for ourselves.
Some both brilliant and large bi-colour topaz, heliodor and quartz were on display. Some of the rough topaz was facetted into exceptional large bright bicolour stones.
Heliodor - Volodarsk, Ukraine
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Topaz on Cleavelandite - Volodarsk, Ukraine
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Big Topaz - Volodarsk, Ukraine
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On the trail of new discoveries we wanted to check out the Weardale material with Gerd Wiedenbeck and Enrico Rinaldi.
For the last few years Gerd has been hosting material from Greenlaws and Enrico more recently material from Boltsburn
There were notable specimens from each locality, and very different in character, you could never get these 2 localities mixed up.
Alphabetically.......
Boltsburn Fluorite - Enrico Rinaldi booth
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And
Greenlaws Fluorite - Gerd Wiedenbeck
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Keeping on the subject of classic minerals we dropped into see Karin & Woli at Wendell Minerals.
The pieces on display in Wendell's booth never cease to be spectacular; not only this, the staging and presentation is second to none.
Trying to decide which pieces to photograph was the most difficult task!
Fluorite & Hematite - Cumbria, UK
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And for me this was "my specimen" of the show so far.
Fluorite - Beihilfe Mine, Saxony, Germany
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I have other some other pictures from here I may post tomorrow.
After Wendell we went calling on Chris at Greekrocks, as you can see there was a conference going on inside!
GreekRocks - that is Chris Mavris with his back to us
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We did take a picture of one of new Christiana Mine azurite specimens that Chris brought onto the scene.
Azurite - Christiana Mine
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We did spend a very long time with Dave Whipp of Crystal Classics. Dave kindly gave us a tour of both their newly mined Weardale fluorite, and their selection of Boltsburn and Irish (Connemara) fluorite.
Dave also showed us around a number of the Crystal Classics treasures, which are pretty well encyclopaedic!
Getting on into the afternoon we crossed to A4, the third hall, and where the main refrectory is sited this year.
A4 Refectory
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And after that into the main area for mostly Moroccan dealers - a great atmosphere and what a range of items on offer.
Talking to other dealers at the show, some of the heat has gone out of the general market for things Moroccan; in general merchandise terms. Hope it is temporary as it would not be Munich without this!
Bazaar in Hall A4
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Amid all the fossil teeth and vanadinite, there are always a few things to amuse. We did enjoy this silver wire.
Silver Wire Morocco - Caveat Emptor!
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Finally in A4 we came across e-Rocker Ryouji Nagae from Japan. His table was covered with some very interesting pieces from his country.
Japanese minerals are not so well featured in European markets so it was great to see pegmatite, fluorite and three localities for rhodochrosite, plus a whole range of other things.
The Oppu Mine rhodochrosite came from on old miners house, it is huge!!
Rhodochrosite - Oppu, Japan
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We finally left the show at 17:00 and walked passed the Mine to Mine exhibition. Still not ready but definitely going to be something to behold tomomorrow.
If we can we will get some pics.
Colorado Dreaming! - Mine to Mine Exhibition (Tomorrow)
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