Hi everyone. It has been quite some time since I have added to this blog because we have been very busy at the shop.
I made it to Tucson again with Derek and we had a week of crazy hectic shopping. We brought home some amazing stones, and have just added some of the new Tumbled Stones to the website.
Since the last blog post/newsletter we added some amazing Pietersite tumbled that we acquired in Tucson last year.
Specifically, these are larger tumbled Pietersite than we have had in the past and we have listed 10 sets of 21 stones each (sets numbers 9 – 18 on the page).
We purchased these stones directly from the owner of the only Pietersite mine which is in Namibia in Africa.
I spent an entire afternoon hand-selecting each stone in every one of these groups, and the resulting sets are just awesome.
If you have never seen Pietersite in person, this highly prized mineral will just amaze you!
From this year’s Tucson trip we have added the follow three pages of Tumbled Stones:
These are absolutely natural Citrine stones from Africa.
We were thrilled to find these for the first time at the 2018 Tucson Show, and gobbled up every bag of high quality material that we could find. These stones have been one of the most popular items here at the shop, and we were almost out of them before leaving for Tucson this year (2019).
We got to this particular dealer one week before his show officially started, and he had already been selling for a day. That represents how difficult shopping in Tucson has become. The dealers start selling earlier and earlier, which means that we have to get to Tucson earlier and earlier.
This year, we actually left Tucson the morning that the first of the numerous shows officially opened. We had already finished our eight days of hectic buying.
Anyway, again the dealer had several bags of natural Citrine and we grabbed all of the best ones – about 10 pounds of stones in total.
This Citrine is sourced from several countries in Africa, and all of the hand-selected sets on this page contain either A grade or AA grade stones, or a combination of the two.
If you have never seen natural Citrine, these beauties are a must. Those familiar with the material know how difficult and expensive it is to obtain.
We hope that you enjoy looking at these stones, and have the ability to acquire some for your collection.
What an amazing find at the 2019 Tucson Show!
These are Yellow Apatite stones from Mexico, and they are simply stunning.
We acquired 100 grams of natural crystals of this material a few years back at a show here in Denver, but this was the first time that we have ever seen tumbled Yellow Apatite. We brought home two pounds of the material.
Some people refer to this as Green Apatite, but the stones are definitely much more yellow than green, and boy are they GEMMY!
Kathi took some pieces to use for her incredible pendants, but all of the stones listed are definitely jewelry worthy.
The clarity and sparkle in these beauties is just amazing, and we think that you will absolutely be thrilled if you are fortunate enough to have any of these Apatites show up in your mailbox.
There are usually a handful of OMG moments in Tucson, and finding these was one of those moments. We bought one pricey bag, and a few days later went back and bought another. The time to buy it is when you see it really rings true in the mineral world.
Thanks much for taking the time to look at these wonders of nature’s art.
We have added 13 new sets of tumbled Tanzanite stones, and one single large tumbled specimen.
All of the stones are gemmy with nice translucence, and exhibit wonderful shades of blue, purple, and a little bit of green.
Coming Attractions
Other amazing stones that we picked up in Tucson include:
Pink Amethyst
This amazing new material was number one on my gotta-find list for this year’s Tucson trip.
These amazing geodes are from the Choique mine in Patagonia Argentina, and are full of pink to red colored quartz crystals. The stones have been given the name Pink Amethyst.
The color is definitely not the same as Rose Quartz, and there is tremendous variety in color across the geodes. The color can range from light pink to blood red, and we even wound up with one lavender specimen.
Even more amazing is that lots of the geodes also contain clear to white Calcite crystals as well as Black crystals. We have been told that these are Calcite as well, but having never before seen black Calcite we are still a little bit on the fence about these.
Anyway, we picked up five flats of these geodes and plan to get several of the stones, many in matching pairs, up on the website. If you would like to see photos of these geodes in the meantime, please just ask.
Amber Palm Stones and Worry Stones
These incredible Amber stones come from Indonesia are from the Eocene period which lasted from about 60 to 40 million years ago.
Derek and I hand-picked 75 of each stone shape from the hundreds of pieces available.
We did this selecting using flashlights because the Amber at first appears to be a fairly dark color but has amazing colors and patterns hiding within. The colors range from yellow to orange to blood red, and many of the stones exhibit more than one color of translucence.
We cannot wait to get some of these beautiful Amber specimens listed on the site. Again, photos available upon request.
Chrysocolla
We had not been able to find any hgih quality Chrysocolla Palm stones for about 10 years. I finally learned the reason why this time in Tucson.
We visited one Peruvian dealer who had stones that I just could not believe I was seeing at first glance… amazing colosr and polish.
He explained that there is a woman in Peru who has one million pounds of this material, and is looking to sell it all in one lot. Of course, this seems like a difficult to accomplish task.
Anyway, this dealer had a limited supply of these stones and we bought 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of them.
That seems like a lot, but as soon as I got home I realized that we should have bought twice as much… this is still a hard lesson to learn after all of these years.
This find was one of the most exciting of the Tucson trip.
Seraphinite
The Seraphinite mine in Russia has been thought to be basically exhausted for several years.
I was amazed to learn that our favorite Russian dealer (husband and wife) was going to have a very limited supply of new Palm Stones at one of the largest and busiest shows in Tucson.
If we had not just by luck run into their daughters at a separate location and learned about these stones, we would not even have gone to this other hectic, crowded, and generally overpriced jewelry show.
We got to the dealer just a couple of minutes after the doors opened, and already half of their small bin of offerings had been gobbled up by one buyer. He just dumped half of the bin into his buying bin.
Derek and I looked through all the rest of the stones and picked out 83 incredible specimens. I would say that these are AA or AAA grade stones.
More to come
That’s if for now. We hope that you enjoy looking at the new Tumbled Stones, and we will get more and more new listings up just as quickly as we can.
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