Dev and I had a wonderful time in Tucson this year. I know, from my research before we left, that it can be hard to understand just what it is like. I thought I would add our experiences to the other articles and information online. You still won't understand until you go, but at least you will have a little more to go on! Oh, and for the record, I am sworn to secrecy on the specific names of dealers we work with..so don't bother asking ;) For those of you who have never heard of it before, the Tucson show is the largest gem and mineral show in the world. It is the Mecca of rockhounds! It consists of 43 locations (there might be more, that's the number I came up with.) Each location having 100's of vendors selling gems, jewelry, beads, rough, anything and everything rock related.

We hit the GJX show (Gem and Jewelry Exchange) about 20 minutes after landing in Tucson. Unfortunately, the camera battery gave out on us right before we got to the show. I did get this lovely shot of Tucson from Rt 10. GJX is a great show. A good mix of jewelry and rocks...not overly beady. We met some wonderful new dealers and touched base with some familiar faces, too. My first purchase of the show was a wonderful trapiche emerald. I love inclusions of all kinds and have been wanting one. I will be doing a post about trapiches and include photos then. The posts about the shows will be pretty much in the order we visited them. We also took a side trip to Sedona and the Grand Canyon which was awesome (in the true meaning of the word!) but more on that later.

We went to the Days Inn, Rapa River, RiverPark (formerly Pueblo Inn in the morning. Amazing shows and hard to see everything! We actually got there a little early (still on east coast time) and many of the vendors were just starting to open. One funny thing that happened was going to a pearl dealer there. I picked out a few pearls including one neat one that showed the growth patterns. I asked what the total there and of the 4 people standing there, none of them could help me. Turned out the one lady who knew how to price the pearls was still at breakfast. I am not sure of the point of the other "helpers"... oh well, never did get back there for my pearls. One of the great things about gem and mineral shows is the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. Just at this one show we met people from Nigeria, Russia, Thailand, China, Brazil, Afghanistan and more. Here are some photos from Days Inn: