Rock and MIneral Shows in Colorado #amethyst

Seems more and more rock and mineral shows are being run with minimal Club oversight.  Last weekend there were 3 shows all within about 15 miles of each other.  How does that work?  Who does the advertising or is it all social media now?  The weekend before I went to the Buena Vista show, which appears to be slowly turning into a large flea market. No information booth, little for kids and more non rock/mineral material for sale than I can recall.  

Looks like a flea market to me... even got a canon

I went to both the Buena Vista show and Woodland Park show this past month and found attendance down at the Buena Vista show from prior visits and the Woodland Park show seemed somewhat quiet as well.  I’ve noticed internet sale sites seem to be flourishing so perhaps the hobby is going through some changes as younger folk get more involved in the hobby/business.  Personally I like to take a real good look at anything I purchase unless I know the dealer.  I’ve seen too many fakes, to include oiling and waxing minerals as well as trimming and reshaping crystal terminations. 

This young lady seemed embarrassed to be seen here haha, or maybe
she was looking at a mineral using a black light under the blanket

I’ve been hearing now that the professionals are sealing minerals to preserve them…  Caveat Emptor I guess.  So the Buena Vista show was a hodgepodge of everything from antiques, antler horns, beads, jewelry, rocks and of course crystals and minerals. The number of dealers and customers seemed to be down a bit especially for a Saturday afternoon. There were 4 rows of dealers and I spent about an hour per row though I think I speeded up the last row as I was getting a bit tired and glazed over in the bright sun. The Buena Vista show is an outdoor event and can get quite hot, windy or wet.  The day I went was pretty nice and I think it stayed in the low 80s with a light breeze. I didn’t purchase much but was drawn to some amethyst on one guy’s table. I was wondering if this stuff was somehow enhanced but with flats of various hues of amethyst and a careful inspection of the material I decided that as far as I could tell this was just some real top-shelf amethyst

These amethyst really popped and I couldn't resist snapping up a couple of these nearly pristine specimens

The amethyst had some of the best color I’ve ever seen and were not blocky like the slabs of amethyst from Brazil, but nicely defined crystals.  The location of these amethyst was one I’d never heard of before from a silver mine in Estado de Mexico.  After some negotiating I finally got a 25% discount on two specimens I had selected.  I really wanted a flat of the amethyst but was not willing to spend $600.  Sheesh it’s still just purple quartz.  The dealer did have some flats from $200-$400 but it was not as brilliant in color or as undamaged, so I cherry picked from the best flat and paid for it accordingly. I noticed something new, or at least new to me.  A number of dealers had amethyst crystal plates with the exterior wrapped in metal. Looked different but not my cup of tea.

It reminded me a bit of crystal trees made out of wire and crystal pieces that were very popular a few years ago.  There was one concession booth and it was doing a brisk business, despite the slim crowd as he was the only vendor there.  

The Woodland Park show was more of the same only half the number of vendors.  This show seems to have peaked in attendance somewhat from prior years as well though I was only there for a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon.  There was a children’s activity area and a number of food and drink vendors.  The show also seems to be a little truer to the selling of minerals, crystals and jewelry than the Buena Vista show.  Most of the dealers at this show were the same ones with the same material I had seen at the Buena Vista show.  My wife went with me this time but neither of us bought anything, though some jewelry caught my wife’s eye it needed some serious cleaning. We hit a nearby Sonic and enjoyed some cool drinks to finish off the afternoon.  Next show is the Sep Denver show and I'm pretty sure there will be a number of interesting items there.

A Hail of a Crystal Pocket or an Extended Weather Report

It was a rather humid day and thundershowers were expected for later in the day.  The prior days forecast mentioned thunderstorms developing over the Colorado Front Range around 3PM and the early morning forecast set back the timing of the storms to 5PM.  Storms were not expected to be severe, except for some isolated heavy rains. A few years ago the Hayman fire stripped the forest of overgrowth which makes the forest along Ute Pass susceptible to mud & rock slides onto US-24. A couple weeks ago I got trapped in the pass due to a rockslide and had to wait for the road to be cleared by front end loaders.  A couple years ago I waited nearly 3 hours for the road to be cleared of debris prior to its reopening.  As I was rock hounding at Lake George I found some interesting goethite and smoky quartz float crystals.  One very large goethite spray is surrounding some smoky quartz crystals and is an exceptional specimen in my opinion. 

3" smoky for size from pocket.  Couple smokys at bottom of goethite spray
Usually smokys in goethite are more embedded than this... I like it!

After finding this specimen near the surface I decided to dig around the area a bit further and deeper and dumbed into a pegmatite with large grained quartz about 2 feet below the surface.  I decided this peg needed further inspection and so I dug up a few feet of this pegmatite to see what way it was traveling underground and see what it might contain.  After an hour or so I started to get smoky quartz faces on some of the pegmatite pieces and then some rather large crystal fragments.  I hadn’t found a crystal point so I wasn’t sure there was much there but as soon as I hit a crease of yellowish-brown mud some quartz points appeared and a small crystal pocket opened up.  

Turned out to be very expensive smokys!

I was getting some fairly large smoky quartz shards but the complete crystals were few and far between.  For the most part the crystals were about 1” except for the one pictured above.  As I was digging out the pocket I found some small fluorite but unfortunately they were not attached to any of the pegmatite or smokys. It was 1:30PM and the sky was beginning to darken to the north.  I mentioned to my digging partner Bob that it had been thundering for nearly a half hour and if we want to get down Ute pass before it might get closed we should pack things up for the day.  I wrapped my meager lot of crystals and headed back to the truck.  One hour later. We stayed dry until we got about half-way down the pass and then the hail began to fall.  I looked for a place to pull off the road for cover but there were really no options.  I slowed my speed, put on my flashers and eventually got off the highway and waited under a willow tree for shelter.  As I left the highway another 5 vehicles followed me off the road. 

I don't care for these ice crystals too much

  I waited about 15 minutes until the hail diminished in size and the storm appeared to ease off some.  So 2” hail is definitely severe weather and it started around 3PM, but oh well I didn’t pay too much for that misguided weather forecast, or did I? I should have stuck with the prior day's weather forecast. We finally resumed going down the pass.  We spent another 30 minutes or so driving thru the hail and eventually within about 5 miles of home the hail quit and changed to rain.  Time for me to start making my own weather forecasts again I guess. National Weather Service can't seem to get it right very often.

Trying to take a little cover off the road under a tree to no avail.  Crack in windshield spreading and car getting totaled.

While my windshield held for the most part, the rest of my vehicle got turned into what looks like a very large dimpled golf ball.  My vehicle is 10 years old with 114,000 miles and I like it a lot but depending on what my insurance company says I may decide to get a new one.  The insurance claim has been filed.  The weather forecast for tomorrow is for severe weather and I’ve decided to stay home… we shall see. Sigh.  Turned out to be sunny, 75 and no rain... go figure.

Most appreciated comments

1) You know if we would have left L George 30 minutes later we probably could have avoided this

2) Oh that doesn't look too bad

3) It if gets totaled I wouldn't mind buying it from you if I can get a discount

Dragons, Castles and Rocks

Lots of rocks here

My wife Vicki decided it was high time we went down to Bishop’s castle in south central Colorado near Wetmore to check on the owner’s building progress. We hadn’t been to Bishop’s castle in quite some time so we were curious to see how things were going.  To learn more about Bishop’s castle and it’s builder/owner see: http://www.bishopcastle.org/  I would say the castle is one of Colorado’s oddities, but still inspiring to see what one man can do with his hands.  The plan was to visit the castle and then have a late lunch in nearby Westcliff and head home from there.  

After lunch we walked off our meal and much to my delight and my wife’s indifference there was a well-stocked rock shop on main street. The store was open but the owner was out of town, so no deals could be made and the sales people couldn’t even seem to get their credit card reader to work.  Well my wife decided her walk wasn’t done and went a few more blocks to the nearest ATM to make a withdrawal and help me out.  After checking some of the labels on the minerals I realized the owner of this store was the mining partner of my former mentor--Ray Berry.  I saw many specimens from Ray’s shared claim called the 2^nd Mesabi. Ray called the claim Mesabi after the iron range in Minnesota due to the large amounts of iron(goethite) he found on that particular claim site.  I thought many of the minerals were fairly priced.  Some of his silver specimens seemed high, but the Lake George minerals I’m used to seeing like amazonite, smoky quartz and fluorite all seemed reasonable. Though the quality of these Pikes Peak Batholith specimens on display was about average in my opinion.  

Specimens for sale from around the world include apatite, vanadanite, fluorite, topaz with elbite/cleavelandite and more

The owner’s back room had about 40 flats of crystals on display with bags of dinosaur bones and many other fossils as well.  Underneath some of the displays I noted another 40 or so boxed flats.  I opened a few of them but found lesser material than what was on display.  I’ll bet there is some better stuff holed away somewhere in storage.  Oh well maybe another day.  Hat’s off to my wife Vicki for tolerating an unplanned rock hounding expedition in Westcliff and getting me some money from a nearby ATM to purchase some of the specimens. Sure is easier to purchase specimens than hunt them down and dig them out of the ground

Goodbye Sangre De Christo mountains, hope to see you again soon

.