Minerals.net

The NY/NJ 2015 Gem & Mineral Show took place this past weekend, from April 10-12. We had a booth at the show promoting the Minerals.net website, and we were also selling some local mineral finds of New Jersey minerals. Special thanks to Juan Gonzalez for manning the booth this year!

This year's show featured an outstanding lecture series organized by Justin Zzyxx, with a nice turnout to all the lectures. Lecturers invited included well-known names such as Jolyon Ralph (Mindat), Evan Jones, John Cornish, David Eicher, Peter Lyckberg, and Justin Zzyxx. Although the fine minerals gallery with the larger dealers was absent this year, there were still good minerals booths and interesting things to see at the show, despite the large amount of bead and jewelry dealers.

The Franklin and Sterling Hill Museums together with some other collectors once again hosted a fabulous fluorescent display in a large room full of glowing rocks under ultraviolet light. Though there weren't many public exhibit showcases this year, I put together some interesting Prehnites from my collection, and Stan Parker had a dazzling display of brightly colored minerals from the New Jersey traprock occurrences.

Several collectors did show Hershel Friedman some new finds; these have been photographed and will be shown in a follow-up post. There seemed to be an abundance of Opal and Opal dealers at the show this year, though some of their items were spectacular, especially the Ethiopian material. For dinosaur enthusiasts, this show is a dream come true. There was a large section in the middle of the show full of large dinosaur replicas and full-size fossils, including a menacing-looking T-Rex. The previous years of this show also had great dinosaur exhibits, but this year was by far the most impressive yet.

Below are pictures of some of the show scenes. Stay tuned for additional posts that we'll be posting this week on this show!

Click on the images below for larger pictures. The pop-up pictures can also be downloaded in a higher resolution by right clicking them to save them locally.)

Juan Gonzalez (L) with Jolyon Ralph (R) of Mindat in the Minerals.net booth.
Jolyon purchased that excellent Sicilian Sulfur he is holding from Juan.
The Sulfur was originally from the collection of Jack Troy.

Bryan Major of Ultra-Rocks came into our booth to show me his Minerals.net cap.
The worn out one on the right is the one he wears all the time while digging.
I gave him the new one on the left to wear when he's at shows or just not digging.