Joined: Thu Dec 13, 2007 3:42 pm Posts: 4091 Location: the Netherlands
SMAM 2012 Impressions
The pretty one and I returned from France yesterday where we had, yet another, absolute blast. Man I love this show. We were just with the two of us so no renting holiday homes with GO friends this time. Instead we threw a tent in the back and drove south. We ended up at the only campsite in town: 'les Reflets' which turned out to be the best place to be anyway because a lot of the traders were camped there too, trying to keep the costs down. Excellent! The whole thing turned into sort of a rock festival but then without the guitars.
News
I'll keep this post short and get to the most noteworthy bits straight away. First: Thomasz from Spiriferminerals.com, who has been composing a mega über cool newsletter. Informational to the max, illustrated beyond deliciousness by Jeff Scovil and the latest version featuring an awesome piece on crystal pockets from heaven in Sakangyi, Myanmar, just southwest of Mogok. He has it online too, the champion. Download the latest one here and the rest here.
Also on the mineral section are the boys from Peter Pittmann Fossilien who had, according to me that is, the top piece of the show for sale. A mere 45k in euros will make you the extremely happy owner of this puppy:
Their collection makes for an awesome decor to show off your favorite bird:
The Gem Section needs a little work. Sure there is plenty of serious sellers there but the amount of beads and other crapola outweigh the quality by a while. The bigger gem dealers from Idar are lacking because of a lack of turnover. The ones that are present complain about a lack of buyers. We'd already noticed last year that where it was shoulder to shoulder in the mineral section one could freely roam the gem part which is situated at a different part of the town. I dunno whether anybody from the SMAM organisation will cruise past this post but a little suggestion from yours truly would be to fuse the two parts into one so that the gem merchants benefit from the popularity of the minerals and increase their exposure. They might find it all more worth their while then. My hunch is that the gem section is where it is because of the buildings present at that site but perhaps an extra tent or two could tackle that problem...
One regular though is Gunter Meelis, an Idar based topaz specialist who has a lot of fun experimenting with nuking all kinds of stuff. Last year I updated the nuked morganite thread and I should hop over there again cause there is more news. last year Meelis Jr. didn't want to tell me where the stuff that was going brown after nuking came from but this year he was in a better mood. It came from the south of Mozambique. He'd now received goshenite from the north of Mozambique and this brought a surprise: upon nuking it turned a nice blue which turned to a more purplish pink then the brown stuff after annealing:
He subjected the blues to sunlight and some faded. The ones that didn't ended up in a bag on his table and I grabbed a piece. I'll be getting into proper spectroscopy this summer/fall and will have to see whether there are any differences to be discovered.
SMAM Gossip
In previous years the Euromineral show was organized by Mineral Concepts SARL, run, since 1997, by Michel Schwab, a local to Sainte Marie aux Mines. To everyone's astonishment Euromineral's website announced shortly after last year's show that the fair would be moving to Colmar. The event would be leaving from the pittoresque town and was to take place in Colmar's Expo Center.
"Why?" I hear you ask. "Beats me...". "Must be money", you may say. "Very likely", I'll answer. The replies I got from the dealers and organisation members ran from "Schwab wanted to increase the security, there is 200 cameras in that Expo center" to "Schwab only cares about his own wallet" and "Schwab didn't get what he wanted so threatened to move the event away". Who knows in what middle the truth lies. What we do know is that a few months ago the Euromineral website started featuring 'Cancellation' banners. The whole Euromineral show was cancelled due to a lack of dealers subscribing for a stall. A link to the SMAM event that would take place was too much to ask apparently...
What had happened? Well, the people of Sainte Marie aux Mines had decided that Schwab could go and get baisée and had begun to organize their own event. The gem & mineral show had been hosted by the town for 49 years and such traditions are better left alone. The whole community is involved in one way or another and many people would feel the absence of the fair in their yearly turnover in ways that would make many a restaurant owner reconsider his business.
The SMAM fair is more of an open air festival than a gem show when you start comparing this event with gem & jewelry shows elsewhere in Europe. Beer stands, the Elzassian 'Flamküchen', a bit of music, some street theater, the ever present sun and just the fact that a whole town morphs into a rock bazaar create an atmosphere that is simply unique and extremely enjoyable. I'm very glad the township has put in the effort and has managed to keep the event going in its proper form.
Sainte marie aux Mines - the annual Gem, Fossil and Mineral Party. Bring your dog... Heck, bring your Chinchilla.
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