Joined: Thu Apr 03, 2014 6:46 pm Posts: 149 Location: Tulsa Ok. area
We had a GemFair in Tulsa and it had a lot of vendors. It was a gem, jewelry & bead show. Our Tulsa Rock and Mineral Society was invited to do demonstrations and promote our club. We have done this for about 8 years and it has been great. And I did pick up some small, fractured emerald rough this year.
I checked some of the vendors and they seem to have some good rough stock of a variety of minerals. They gave me a free pass for signing up for their newsletter, so I think I'll go for a few hours.
I went to the gemfaire. As the name hinted, it was *mostly* finished gemstones and beads and jewelry supplies, but there was a nice Aus Opal rough booth, and a couple of my local rockhounders there.
It was such fun though. I'll post pics in a couple days.
I was kinda cheesed at first because the VERY FIRST BOOTH was a contrail/antivaxxer booth and they were the ones giving away the official bags. Kinda a wtf moment there.
Once past that, there were lots and lots and lots of sparkly things. My wallet was itching, but I managed to restrain myself until I saw a booth selling bowls made of....I don't know what it's called. The lady called it blue something-stone...not soapstone, but sounded like it (I was very tired, sorry). It's a deep blue-black, with silver and blue flecks all over it that glitter in the light. It's probably something synthetic, since the flecks are very regular, but it's so pretty I couldn't resist.
After that, I managed to keep my hands to myself until I got to the black opal roughs booth. The guys there, from opal-beads.com, were very friendly, nice, and informative.
I spent most of the rest of my time there (and fighting the ATM machine) and ended up buying two rough rub parcels.
I also chatted with the guys next to that booth, who were from one of the local rock hound clubs. They gave me their schedule and fee charts and explained the things they did. I think I'll join next spring when field trips are likely! They're going to have their own mineral show in a few weeks. Totally going!
Sorry that this is sort of amateurish, I just had a lot of fun and wanted to share.
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