Tucson Gem Show 2022

The 2022 Gem Show wasn’t cancelled! Slava and I attended with his cousins and their friend, and our friend Spencer who has a shop in Boston.

a large uncut emerald at the GJX show

Slava, of course, had been to the Gem Show before, but it was my first time. It’s amazingly huge. People are selling gems and minerals and whatnot in tents and motels rooms (and probably out of cars) all over the city. We went to two industry-only shows and a few held at motels.

AGTA and GJX are big shows for people in the industry. Non-industry people can only get in as invited guests. AGTA had a room of finished jewelry and award winning items, plus a huge room of mostly stones with some equipment thrown in for good measure. GJX was almost exclusively gems, with a few rooms set aside for the Germans and the Brazilians (not sure why those two got special treatment). People come from all over the world to buy and sell and network. Inside the trade shows, most people were wearing masks, probably 80%. The lighting is intense. Stones are sparkling everywhere. It can be disorienting. We saw a Kashmiri sapphire that was going for $3 million (wholesale)!

Slava’s cousin was after an Ammonite with Ammolite. We found two reputable places selling the huge ones he was after, and he bought a few!

I also spent some time at a parallel show, the African Village. They were set up in tents in a gated parking lot. Lots of beautiful new and antique textiles, baskets, art, beads, flirty African guys, etc. Most stuff was from Africa, but I bought a bunch of baskets that were made in Pakistan. I wanted to buy some beads, but the bead tent was overwhelming, and the beads I wanted were $500/ strand (red white and blue glass beads)!

I also went to a mineral show that was in/around a motel. The outside had a ton of typical hippie flea market bullshit - crappy silver rings, Tibetan clothes and flags, singing bowls, etc.

The mineral show was pretty boring as well - tables and tables of the same stuff. There was one little spot with meteorites that were pretty nice.

But wait, there’s more! We also went to a huge Fossil and mineral show that was open to the public. There were a few dinosaur skeletons, both real and reproduction. Tons of fossils, meteorites, plus the usual crap. I didn’t buy anything, although I was tempted to buy some fossilized vertebrae. I did photograph an obscene number of crystal skulls, though. Very few people in the Fossil tent were wearing masks. Maybe 2%. We definitely stood out as Liberal weirdos.

Slava and I were after some side stones to match a large red Spinel we already have, and Slava found a great pair in grey. We also bought a few Sapphires and we got some of these fantastic Trapiche Emeralds, which are my favorite thing we saw at the show. I wish we could have afforded to buy them all!

Trapiche Emerald

Some other favorites.

fossil of a dragon fly and a fish

Unusual colors in this slice of petrified wood

Boulder Opal

This little guy was already sold.