The Search for the Perfect Stone

Apr 1, 2023

This year at in Tucson, The Arkenstone and Dr. Rob Lavinsky were featured in an interview by Rachel Monroe of The New Yorker titled, “The Search for the Perfect Stone” published on February 21, 2023. We have included the first paragraph here. For the full article, please visit The New Yorker’s website.


Business is booming, and bidding wars and backroom deals have taken over the wildly popular Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.

“For a few weeks every winter, Tucson briefly goes rock crazy. In 1955, local gem-and-mineral enthusiasts began hosting a get-together, an event that’s since become something much more commercial, and much more overwhelming. This year, there were forty shows throughout the city, each of them a mazelike complex of dozens or hundreds of venders, drawing tens of thousands of visitors in total. Browsing one afternoon, I saw available for purchase a bathtub made of quartz, a case of onyx obelisks, an uncut twenty-two-carat diamond, a pendant made from a meteorite, a fossilized dinosaur tooth, and a daunting number of beads. A ubiquitous ad on the radio had an even more tantalizing proposition: “Do you want to take a picture with a baby goat inside a giant geode?””

-Rachel Monroe