Rock Hounding the Denver Mineral Show 2017

I see rocks in my future

Rock hounding the Denver Show can be fairly daunting but if you have a plan, can stay on your feet for a few hours and are prepared you can have a great time.  I think the Denver Show grew by nearly 100% this year with venues all over the city.  Denver is the second biggest show in the USA, second only to the Tuscon AZ show.  There were 11 venues and probably about 1000 dealers.  I went to a fraction of the show and took in only 30 or so vendors.  After a few hours everything starts to look the same to me as my powers of observation begin to wane.  A young friend of mine Austin wanted to go so I figured his enthusiasm would keep me going.  Prior to heading out I made sure we had a plan on where to go as well as a backpacks with water and a couple snacks.  We hit the Denver Coliseum which boasted 600+ vendors and "5 miles of tables".  The Denver Coliseum hosted 4 different venues on both sides of Interstate 70.  We also visited the Colorado Mineral and Fossil Venue which had about 150+ dealers located about 10 miles east of the Coliseum. We started at the tent area behind the Coliseum and walked into a sales area filled with quartz crystals from Minas Gerais, Brazil.  While many of these crystals had some damage a careful search of the 40 odd tables did turn up some well terminated gemmy pieces.  Now I don’t normally buy quartz as I can find plenty here in Colorado, but the size and price on these were too good to pass up. They also had many clear crystals. Evidently this tent opens up to dealers about 3 days prior to the general public so while everything had been gone through by the dealers there was still plenty of product for the rest of us to look through. Also I understood prices were reduced after the dealers cherry picked the offerings. I can hardly imagine what gems some of the dealers walked off with. I wasn’t sure I was ever going to leave this tent.  After an hour or so I had a flat full of choice pieces and Austin had a monster smoky. 

Box of crystals from Minas Gerais, Brazil ready for reselling

My favorite purchased smoky Xls

We eventually migrated to another tent and I purchased a small grouping of amethyst crystals while Austin tried to get a bargain on some tourmaline.  The dealer kept changing his price on the tourmaline but Austin stuck with it and eventually bought one. Next we moved inside the Coliseum and Austin found one of his favorite gem dealers.  All gems were marked and discounted down to $5 a gem.  Austin purchases these, sets them in silver and flips them on line.  I wandered around til I found a lady selling 3” double terminated citrine crystals for about $5 a pop.  I watched as one customer purchased a couple hundred of these.  The area was somewhat dark and though the crystals looked okay they appeared oiled to me.  I bought a few to take home and check them out.  Yup they were oiled and were probably heated amethyst. The oil hides the white abrasions and scratches on the crystal surface and makes the specimens look a lot better than what they really are. I read on line that many pale amethyst are heated until they become yellow citrines.  While I can’t be sure of heat treatments it wouldn’t surprise me one bit… the oiling was obvious in the sunlight.  Oh well I dropped only $30 and as the saying goes “caveat emptor” especially in poorly lighted selling areas ;-)  We had now reached the 3 hour point and I decided it was time to do some tailgating at the rock show.  It seemed like we barely sat down for a break and we were off again under the interstate to see what was on the other side of the road. 

Austin picking through the $5 gems

I kept looking for the Miners Co-op area, but on the way we visited the fine mineral gem area.  Most of these crystals were out of our league but it’s always nice to dream.  A couple of vendors made a little chit chat with us but as soon as they sensed a real customer was nearby they left us.  World class crystals were the norm here and I enjoyed dreaming of what could be if I would ever win the Power ball lottery.  I guess I insulted one dealer by offering too low a price for a nice specimen of vanadanite and so I decided again it was time for us to look for the Prospector’s Co-op area.  Saw a few folks at the Co-op I knew, said hello and moved on to look for one of Austin’s favorite dealers.  Austin is usually able to trade some minerals with this dealer for specimens so I had brought along a flat of amazonite and smoky quartz crystals to see if I could make a trade.  Austin’s dealer friend had just traded for a large quantity of nice looking tourmaline with another dealer and when the dealer saw my amazonite smoky combos I saw his eyes light up and knew I would be taking home some tourmalines.

I traded for some tourmalines from the Cruzeiro Mine, Brazil

I got $740 in trade for my box of crystals. After making a couple more trades with the dealer we decided to move on down the road to the Colorado Mineral and Fossil Show.  I was looking for some supplies and was happy to find all sorts of stands in various forms and sizes at one store that will help me display my minerals to their best advantage. After a few supply purchases we moved on to visit Joe Dorris’ booth.  It was getting near to the end of the day and Joe spent some time looking at our purchases and surprised me by offering me some topaz from his claim.  I had found some topaz on his claim and gave them to him as agreed upon and he cleaned them up and returned two of them to me. It was nearly 5PM and we decided it was time to call it a day.  I was very pleased with both my quartz crystals, tourmaline and a surprise topaz,  I learned a fairly inexpensive lesson about citrine but easily made up for that with my other purchases and trades.  This wasn’t my first big show and lessons learned regarding planning ahead, bringing along a backpack, as well as trade items made this a very enjoyable outing. Having a friend along is a fine idea too.

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Pseudomorph Sunday Or A Return To Iron Hill

We found a lot of goethite ((FeO(OH)), pseudomorphs of goethite after siderite and even iron globs on smoky quartz crystals on a hill near Lake George so we've nicknamed the hill Iron Hill. I prospected around today for a while on Iron Hill and kept finding float crystals. There was nearly no slope near the top of the hill where I was prospecting and no discernible pegmatite yet every once and a while a 5 inch smoky or well formed amazonite would pop out of the dirt. I would dig down around the spot where I found the keeper but there would be no pegmatite even a foot below these occasional floater crystals. I kept prospecting for an hour or so but was not able to find the source of the float amazonite and smokies so I decided to show Bob, my digging partner, a couple of my float crystals and see if he was having any luck.  Bob was also finding some float amazonite along with a bit of goethite.  I told him I was going to quit digging in my area and try something else.  As I walked back to my old site to load up my tools I noted a 2 inch smoky basking in the sunshine. I marked that spot as my next prospecting site and returned there with my equipment. At least this spot had plenty of rock which suggested pegmatites somewhere near the surface rather than just all dirt. Three feet up the hill from where I found the float crystal there was a small pile of rocks that I supposed someone assembled. I noticed only a shallow depression from where these may have been dug but didn't believe whoever dug this dug very deep. As I began my dig I hit a number of smoky quartz shards about 10 inches down and thought just maybe I might be on to something. As I moved up the hill towards the pile of rocks I kept getting quartz shards and an occasional pseudomorph of goethite after siderite see: http://www.wasatchgemsociety.com/content/rock-talk-library/pseudomorphs  We’ve found plenty of pseudomorphs on Iron Hill before so these pseudomorphs came as no surprise, I picked a couple up and showed them to Bob who immediately recognized them for what they were. These pseudomorphs of goethite after siderite were bigger than what we had been finding so Bob decided to join in the fun and watch me dig. We were both concerned about the pile of rocks in front of me, but it looked to me like they were associated with a fairly shallow dig to my right and since I was finding quartz shards and pegmatite about a foot below the ground I continued my dig.  Soon the dirt began to turn orange-ish yellow and began to clump up.  Well it was obvious to me this clay signified the edge of a pocket so I put away my rock hammer and pulled out one of the wooden chop sticks John Wager had given us and began probing through the clay looking for crystals. Wager sticks work really well in clayish materials--everyone should have one. Or you can get some knock-offs from your local Chinese restaraunt. Wood is very soft and normally won't scratch crystals. While smoky quartz shards and a few crystals were fairly plentiful the highlight of this pocket was pseudomorphs of goethite after siderite.  Bob and I each got a nice fist sized plate of these pseudomorphs on matrix (pegmatite). Although these specimens are not highly prized by many I find them to be exceptional examples of pseudomorphs from the Pike Peak Batholith and very collectible. Yes, I would rather have some amazonite smoky combos but you take what you can get and this was better than getting shut out. By the way the previous digger who piled up a small rock cairn, put it right on top of the pocket I discovered.  Maybe I should just look for these rock cairns and pull out the crystals underneath ;-)  The sky was rumbling with thunder once again, my annoying headache had returned and I just unearthed a nest of large black ants that began crawling all over everything. I decided it was time to call it a day and return next week to finish up this pegmatite and check out a few rock piles on Iron Hill.  Hopefully the ubiquitous ants will have found a new home as well, until then happy rock hounding--Falls Coming!