Minerals.net

The 22nd Street Show, run by Lowell Carhart and his crew at Eon Expos, does a fantastic job organizing a gigantic, ever-growing tent just south of downtown Tucson, calling it the 22nd Street Show. The tent is open before and during the main show, and has a multitude of mineral, gemstone, and jewelry dealers present from all parts of the world.

There are many dealers with gemstone rough, beads, lapidary material, and common foreign material. But scattered throughout the show are several significant mineral dealers with interesting findings. Many great deals and hidden treasures can be found if you comb carefully through the giant tent.

Some of the interesting material I witnessed at this show included more of the yellow-tipped Quartz with Halloysite from Cabiche, Colombia. Schwartz Fine Minerals contained several displays of very large and aesthetic material mined this year, labelled, ironically, as "Corona Quartz." (Perhaps this was a precursor of what was yet to come after the show!) Schwartz Fine Minerals also had a new find of lightly-colored Amethyst in "cactus" like formations, from the famous amethyst locality of Piedra Parada, Veracruz.

The Gneiss Guys (they are some nice guys out of Canada) had Apophyllite with an unusual orange color, from Nashik, India. There is an abundance of Moroccan dealers at this show, all pretty much looking the same with the same material (Vanadinite, Aragonite, Barite, Quartz, wrapped in a very typical format.) However, this year surprised me with several of these Moroccan dealers having giant mineral matrixes covered with hundreds of Vanadinite crystals. These are highly impressive for the color and quality, and surpass any previous level of this popular Moroccan mineral.

A new vendor was present at the Showcase tent under the company name of Sonoranite. This company has discovered, polished, and marketed a new gemstones that they have given the trade name "Sonoranite". The material, discovered by Scottsdale natives John and Steve Hornewer, describes a dark metamorphic rock containing Epidote, Pumpellyite, sulfides, and gold ore. The specific locality was not provided, but presumably it is somewhere in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.