MINERAL EXPLORERS | S2 | Ep7 | TUCSON

[Music] the wild west its painted deserts and vast canyons are the perfect backdrops for the legends of courageous gunfighters who walked the iconic streets of tombstone [Music] but it wasn't these quick-drawing cowboys who would have the biggest influence on the rest of the young nation no the west was one with minerals arizona produces a variety of highly collectible mineral specimens but copper is the hero of arizona's mineral wealth and ultimately would turn this territory into a state a state where still today you can find yourself sitting right in the middle of [Music] history i'm thomas nagin and i'm a mineral explorer i'm the guy that supplies museums galleries and private collectors with world-class pieces of nature's art come along with us as we travel the globe in search of rare gems crystals and other fine minerals it's not always easy but it's always an adventure [Music] this is copper country arizona leads the nation in the production of this highly sought mineral commodity but for mineral enthusiasts the state holds many treasures and is home to the world's biggest mineral show i've been coming here for almost 40 years a really long time and i've made a lot of friends here at the tucson show because there's so much to be offered here and it's so interesting people from all over the world minerals from all over the world just about anything you can imagine here's a little overview of some of the shows that are happening here in tucson there's the westward look there's the tucson convention center there's here the tucson city center and there's probably 40 other shows that are happening at one time or another during the month the participating vendors come from all around the world to display their wares moving thousands of tons of merchandise by air land and sea [Music] it's no small task getting ready for tucson first the minerals have to be sourced then they're shipped back home where they're processed priced and packaged for transit fortunately i have some great help tim's been working with me for over 20 years he's in charge of receiving and processing the minerals at our warehouse well we're getting ready for the tucson gym and mineral show and it usually takes us about five months to get ready for that show we take about 22 000 pounds of minerals to tucson with us when the minerals arrive they're often dirty and dull but by the time tim is done with them their hidden beauty shines well we're going to go through the cleaning process of the amethyst which requires putting the amethyst through hydrochloric acid and we leave it in approximately 24 hours after that it goes into a neutral bath of baking soda and water and after a night in neutral then they'll be pulled out and put into oxalic acid which takes the iron out and once they come out of that after a boiling temperature they'll go downstairs and be put on the table to be priced the work we do here is meant to enhance the specimen not alter it and tim is an expert at making sure each piece looks its very best on occasion we get pieces in that are too large for the saws that we have here and sometimes they have a little too much damage or they need to be cut to stand up proper we set it up on a pallet such as this put a couple of straps on it so it doesn't move and then we take our saw which we have a diamond chainsaw and we use to cut the mineral it's water fed gas operated the water comes out of the bar in between the teeth on the chain the teeth on the chain are all diamond coated so we can cut through quartz or dolomite or just about anything else we want to cut through [Music] come january this southwest city turns into a playground for mineral enthusiasts at its center is the tucson gym and mineral show the flagship event well this gym and mineral show is tucson's premier event 4 500 exhibitors over 314 000 people who come to the show it's in a community of a million people the majority of them from out of town it's just something that really features our community because i think one of the great attractions to the show is you can go from show to show and get every different kind of experience we like to say you can buy things here from five dollars to five hundred thousand dollars the main show is a non-profit hobby organization that started this whole big thing 62 years ago their focus is on the public and educational outreach and they concentrate mainly on minerals geology and earth sciences the people that are involved with the organization are serious mineral enthusiasts and they want to share their passion with people all over the world they basically create the world's biggest and best mineral museum it exists for only four days and then it disappears never to be seen in that format again [Music] they have competitions for the best cases and people compete and they give awards it's really kind of interesting to see which are the best cases [Music] every year there's a different theme the world's top museums bring fantastic displays on that theme there's so much to explore and see here it's no wonder that it's the world's premier event for [Music] minerals i teach sixth grade science and uh one of the things about minerals is is that young people can make a difference in the science okay my dad found that species when he was 17. i found this conlight which is a fairly real species when i was also 17 with my twin brother this is a collection of bisbee minerals uh the oldest one here rates dates from probably about 1883 1884 and some of them came out as late as about 1986. the focus is mainly azurite which is a common copper ore bright blue it gives a general good representation of blue minerals from bisbee i moved to arizona in 59 the show had already been in place four years my first visit here was 1960. so in 55 they did a show they held it in the helen keeling elementary school cafeteria but tucson was already a setting ready for because the old movie studios over on the other side of the mountains at old tucson in all of the cowboy movies that were shot in the desert were shot outside of tucson and so the actors and the crews all stayed here in tucson so the city really had the facilities for expansion uh the year that i had my five artery bypass operation was january 2nd and i was here the next month so the staunch advocate i don't know if that's dedication or stupidity for folks in the mineral trade this event is a family reunion of sorts bob's been a regular here at the show well before i started over 40 years ago this is mineral mecca really is mineral mecca this is the harvard display the theme of the show is blue minerals so we've got compositions in blue and i mean you've got the fabulous topaz with a cut stone there very very very fun huge brush yeah oh yeah yeah well the the piece that impresses me surprisingly is not all of this it's that piece of labrador right that's a that's ordinary felspar yes labradorite great piece yeah and that that really is a great piece you know the beauty of harvard is it's it's historical experiences you know they've been doing stuff on minerals for 150 years it's really quite a remarkable place anyway that's that's the harvard case one thing that sets this show apart is the number of quality exhibits from non-profit institutions well the theme for the show is blue all right this was put in by the gemological institute of america over in california look at the size of this topaz yeah that's unbelievable that's outrageous i hear they just won the uh award for the best case yeah they should yeah right yeah it's marvelous you know look at the lapis beats here the little instruments carved out yeah yeah and the variety of faceted stones that are all blue look at that right yeah and i think that's each one that's cool yeah yeah it's my favorite alfredo arizona's own minerals are the result of the state's unique geology but their discovery was largely due to a long hunt for copper imagine their surprise when the miners stumbled across these beautiful and strange formations i was born and raised in arizona my father was a mineral collector and he got me started collecting minerals i decided to focus on minerals from arizona because of the rich mineral heritage that arizona mines have produced there's a rich variety of different mineral species that are found here in mostly in southern arizona you know really arizona was a territory for a long time until 1912 and the reason arizona became a state was due to its mineral wealth the arizona territory you know these large copper deposits were discovered in the late 1800s bisbee being one of those at that time arizona was just a territory not a state these copper deposits were discovered right at the same time that electricity was coming online as you know to run the whole country be started running on electricity so this copper was in demand for wiring and so on and arizona kind of had to prove to the the bureaucrats in washington that that it was worthy of becoming a state well everything in this case is from the state of arizona but several of these pieces are from the copper deposits of bisbee arizona this large blue specimen in the center is azurite this was one of the important copper ores in the early period of the mining at bisbee this particular specimen was collected in the early 1890s you probably noticed these these orange and yellow crystals that's the mineral wolfenite [Music] wolfenite is a very popular mineral due to its beauty and actually right now we're working to get wolfenite established as the official state mineral of the state of arizona here's a specimen of these long crystals here of of metallic copper that's from bisbee arizona also these are unusual crystals because the crystals are actually twinned and twinning happens when you get a two crystals that form in a mirror image there are only so many of these things they're very beautiful they're very unique and they need to be preserved for future generations it's easy to get captivated at one show but there's so much to see in tucson with satellite shows all over town many that cater to a specific shopper so the westward look is really just a satellite show of the whole big event that's tucson it's not a big show we have maybe 40 dealers and a few blocks of hotel rooms here you can walk around in a few hours but in terms of concentration of goodness it's like walking through a museum there's more good fine mineral specimens here in this hotel than anywhere else in the world at any time including most major museums so i'm rob lewinsky i've actually come to tucson for 26 years now since i was a freshman in college and at some point about 10 11 years ago a number of us got together and started thinking wouldn't it be nice to show minerals more exclusively at a nicer venue if we just pull it back a little bit have a little more privacy in space we're out here at this beautiful natural preserve and it's just a nicer environment to show these beautiful things so we moved up here and created the westward look show the westward look has a style the style is elite very fine collectible specimens [Music] the arizona mineral and fossil show has been running since 1989. we have about 250 vendors in the rooms we have another 100 vendors in the tents and in the ballrooms and in the lobby and this has become basically the social center of the mineral collecting and mineral buying and selling of the tucson show [Music] we try to cater to the wholesale trade we're looking for shop owners we're looking for collectors we're looking for curators we're looking for people that buy for resale this is the place to get the best prices there are dealers that literally come to this show during the opening days of the show and then a week later they set up at other shows around the tucson and double their money just bam just like that each year this show takes over entire hotels the beds are moved out of many of the rooms and minerals moved in i've been displaying here for over 20 years and it's always a pleasure to return well this this piece here is a pyrite and quartz this comes from mundo nuevo in in northern peru which is at about 15 000 feet it's really high in altitude gasping for air up there yeah it's a really sweet one the vendors here really know their trade for many it's a passion an out of control hobby that eventually became a career i am from barcelona spain and i came to tucson in 1986 in the past century of course a long long time ago but i started to do deals with the minerals when i had 14. i have 58 right now so it means 44 years doing business which is a long trip my favorite mineral could be the fluoride i know it's a common mineral sorry for that that presentation many shapes many shadows many colors many forms many different metrics it's frequent in many different places so probably is the fluorite this is a chlorapatite this is one specimen more sure than the other ones you can see the color it's more intense you can see the zoning but it means it means that the crystal was growing with the deeper color in the beginning you can see the deeper line inside and you can see the clearer color on the top of the crystal and that makes very attractive to the collectors all minerals tell a story some tell the story of ancient life on planet earth [Applause] here we see the very famous archaeopteryx there are only existing about 12 specimens of this coming from one location in germany and it's very it's a very important fossil because it's a missing link it means from the theory of evolution and so the archaeopteryx shows teeth and feathers so it means it's between dinosaurs and birds and that's why it's so important and there are only actually 12 specimens existing so what we did is only showing this specimen the people cannot really see by i mean the first idea what it was it was a bird bird with teeth so to show it to the kids to the families to the parents to all the visitors they have now an imagination of what archaeopteryx is during the tucson show you can find minerals everywhere sometimes even before you get in the showroom doors so how many pieces do you have in your lot there's uh 56 pieces all together i believe that it started growing here and then it's it's separated separated yeah right it's like rabbit ears but this one is quite an impressive size that's real impressive because it's so much larger these are twin crystals so there's about 15 of these yeah eight [Music] oh that's a nice one yeah i like this piece [Music] so what does this piece weigh about 60 pounds yeah really they're really this is a pretty piece i like this one [Music] thanks so much sir i appreciate it i appreciate it from its world-renowned trade show to its own mineral wealth arizona has a lot to offer the mineral enthusiasts and perhaps no one knows better the native son les presmek a long time mining engineer mineral expert and the proud owner of one of the best private collections of arizona minerals we joke about the fact that that that there are there has to be a collector gene you know and because some people collect whatever it is and a lot of people do not my father was not a collector he never understood why i didn't take every mineral specimen and turn it into money and go buy land or something else not bad advice but nowhere near as as pretty as being able to enjoy the minerals and it's about the beauty of the mineral specimens it's about the science it's about the history less prismic born and raised in arizona i've been collecting minerals now 53 years almost 54 years since i was 10 years old everything that you'll see today is just from arizona arizona is known as the copper state once copper was discovered copper has lasted and been a economic mainstay in this state too today and will be for a number of decades into the future [Music] some of the the major copper mines are well represented here everything on that shelf is from morenci in the case of azurite and malachite azurite is the blue malachite is the green this lower shelf or lower two shells are all bisbee specimens ranging from having been collected about 1885 to as recently as 1990 or so one of the other minerals that arizona is world famous for is its wolfenite and probably the most famous locality in arizona and one of the most famous in the world for wolfenite is the red cloud mine the copper in the middle is one of our best specimens i believe based on others that it's one of the best if not the best native copper specimens from bisbee not all specimens can go out on display in cabinets as much as i would like to but the second best thing is to be able to have drawers available at least i can pull them out one drawer at a time and look at the minerals and enjoy their beauty or remember the story about who i was collecting with or who i got it from or the collection any number of things every specimen has a story the minerals we prize today have a history that began long before us collectors essentially are caretakers preserving nature's art for generations to come so here we are at the university of arizona's mineral museum it's a hidden treasure in tucson everybody who comes to this show should see it but not everybody knows it's here hopefully that's changing and one of the great things about being in a place like this is it ties in for you where this stuff ends up we see these come out of the ground in the episodes of the series we go all over the world to see these things collected and found and a lot of them go to private collectors but eventually 50 years later 100 years later it ends up in a museum like this and to see them in this context really shows you how valuable and important these kinds of things are my name is bob downs i'm a professor of mineralogy here at the university of arizona i study maybe high pressure minerals the minerals that make up the interior of the earth more recently i'm a co-investigator in the mars rover project and we're driving the curiosity around in gale crater and we were identifying the minerals of mars so my whole mars rover involvement is because i built a database analyzing the minerals that are in this mineral museum and creating technologies for identifying them remotely the university of arizona mineral museum has such a collection of rare minerals that we've analyzed and determined ways to identify things very quickly so one of the component when the mineral show comes in is a stream of people coming through the museum through the labs with unknown materials that they've gathered over the last year or so and saying can you help us identify what these materials are now they provide a history for instance the bisbee exhibit that you've been seeing we have pieces from the world's fair in 1900 in paris because it's been warm and there's been no glaciers coming through arizona all that top rock has not been pushed aside like it has in most of the rest of the country and that leaves all these areas where the crystals grow so arizona is just very good for certain types of crystals [Music] arizona is a geological wonderland with a rich history largely shaped by its mineral wealth the discoveries innovations and events that have followed have kept it at the center of the unique and exciting world of minerals you're going to love it [Music] if you want to see more episodes or check out our mineral collection click the link in the description and of course like and subscribe to our channel thanks for watching and we'll see you next time on mineral explorers you

Channel: Mineral Explorers

Views: 7,552

Rating: 4.9757576 out of 5

Keywords: TUCSON, TUCSON MINERAL SHOW, MINERAL HUNTING, GEM COLLECTING, ROCK COLLECTION, TRADE SHOW, ARIZONA MINERALS, MINERALS, GEM HUNTING, MINERAL COLLECTION, ROCK COLLECTING, TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, MINES, CAVES, EXPLORING, JEWELRY, GEM DEALING, JUNGLE, MINERAL EXPLORERS, SOUTH AMERICA, MINING, TREASURE, GEM POCKET, NATURAL TREASURE, ROCKS, CRYSTALS, CRYSTAL COLLECTING, TUCSON GEM SHOW, ARIZONA MINERAL AND FOSSIL SHOW, COPPER, AZURITE, WULFENITE, MINERAL DEALERS, TUCSON GEM MINERAL AND FOSSIL SHOWCASE

Id: FT6rWNs9DgI

Length: 26min 14sec (1574 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021