I had the good fortune to be able to run over to Evan Jones' booth real quickly at the start of the Tucson main show, and snag one good piece in the stampede to buy these. He was the only dealer-outlet and seller of this material, collected in a freak pocket at the little-known Carlota Mine on October 24, 2009. It was found on the 3460-foot-deep level. This was, to my eye on the prowl, the best large plate there for overall aesthetics and quality. It is a GORGEOUS, Tsumeb-intensity of blue color! The lustre is fabulous, in person. The piece has sharp crystals, to 1 cm or so in size. They LOOK like Tsumeb material at half the price they should be, but are from Arizona instead. Nobody expected this, and to my knowledge in nearly 100 years of on and off mining here, such have not been found before. This makes the odds of a repeat find, somewhat low in my estimation. In any case, this is a truly beautiful and fine azurite plate for any lcoality, particularly Arizona, priced cheaply in my opinion. More of the long history on this locality can be found at MINDAT: http://www.mindat.org/loc-61469.html. Again, if you saw this at twice the price, labelled Tsumeb, you would not blink an eye or think it improper...it could pass!

From the recent finds in Peru (January 2010), this is a hefty, 750-gram specimen of pink fluorite perched BETWEEN bright pyrite on one side, and stark, metallic galena on the other side! The contrasts are striking - I have never seen such a nice combo, with BOTH species side by side flanking the fluorite. The pyrite is in the form of small crystals, with brilliant lustre; while the galenas are bigger crystals with a strange waxy lustre and almost silky in appearance. The contrasts and sparkle factor are very pronounced , here. The pink fluorite measures nearly 5 cm across its bottom edge, so this is a sizable and significant piece. It is pristine as well. We saw a large part of this pocket, and I felt for the overall associations, this was one of the most interesting pieces among them.

Legrandite comes at its biggest crystal size from Ojuela, BUT this smaller, more isolated locale in another state was the type lcoale, and specimens from here are MUCH less common (though ANY good legrandite is rare). This habit is distinctive, to the mine, as is the matrix. This would thus be an old specimen, probably 1950s or earlier (it was first found here in 1932). Most Flor da Pena legrandites are blebs on a rock, or small, isolated crystals that really do not produce a specimen with display "oomph". However, this piece has the most packed, concentrated showing of crystals I have seen for the mine, all with intense lemon-yellow color. I regard this specimen highly, therefore: it merges my favorite criteria of import in a natural history and rarity sense, with display quality beauty on a shelf. The color impact is worth the price, as it would be with any Ojuela legrandite, in my opinion; but it is a more important piece overall than what you might get for the price form the more popular Ojuela locality (and, again, that mine has not produced legrandite in over 25 years anyhow).

This is old classic material, mined several decades ago. VERY FEW old stibnites from this famous and now defunct district have any kind of modern, world-level aesthetics to them. This one, however, can hold its own against contemporary chinese material collected under better conditions. It is nearly pristine, and has a very aesthetic arrangement of radiating crystals from a common center. The crystals reach 3 cm. Small, sharp, gem-clear barites to 4 mm abound in the crevasses between the crystals. I have also chosen not to overclean this to make it bright and shiny - it retains its original patina.

This is a Ryker Mount box with approx. 20 crystals of varying shapes and sizes, of boleite. They are mostly cubic, in habit. These are from the famous late 1970s re-exploration of this prospect by Larson and Swoboda. Sizes reach 9mm, though the largest one is not sharply cubic

From a famous find of 2006, this is a superb example of spinel-twinned copper crystals from a one-time erratic find. All came from a single large boulder found by Stan Esbenshade, and carefully trimmed out. This is a complete floater, terminated all around and formed in a spongy mass of strange copper float material. This is a particularly gracile and elegant, slightly curving, specimen composed of a central twinned crystal from which outgrowths shoot to the sides. This was a onetime find, and now these are hard to find for sale today. Classic!