Gem Show Magic

 

We’ve been coming to the Tucson Gem Show for over 35 years to buy for the store and it’s always a great time. We get to see so many amazing things, take in the desert beauty and warmth, reunite with old friends and make new ones – but best of all is the occasional “gem show magic!” Out of the blue, we come across an amazing find, or meet fascinating people and discover some new connection to something significant, or certain synchronicities occur and we learn fascinating things that change our perspective. Here are our top gem show magic stories from this year:

• When we arrived, I got a text from our assistant manager Clyde with a picture of a fossilized frog, asking us to keep our eyes out for one. I’d never even seen a fossilized frog before and doubted we’d be able to find one at this massive show (there are over 40 venues that make up the overall Tucson Gem Show). A week later, we went to an after hours party at one of the shows. As we were getting ready to leave, I went to grab a last bite to eat, looked down at the table and low and behold, there were the frogs next to a bowl of chips! My eyes bugged out like in a cartoon. I was able to talk with the person who was selling them to find out more, and found out they were only just fossilized in 2023 by a freak environmental event! I’ve never heard of anything fossilizing in current times. I was blown away by the story behind them (more on that in a future post). They were more affordable than I thought they would be, so we bought 3 for the store and we’re very excited to share them with you!

 

• We met and had dinner with the person who named bumblebee jasper, and was responsible for locating and bringing Indonesian material to the states, Joel Ivey. He spent decades working for the Anaconda Mining Company as a geologist. They would send him around the world to look for gold and silver. When his parents died, it caused him to really look at his life and he realized he didn’t want to work for anyone else except himself. Someone brought him to the Tucson Gem Show in the early 2000s, where he saw there was good business in the gem and mineral trade, so he decided to go back to Indonesia and see what he could find. He “discovered” and named bumblebee jasper, and found grape agate, fossilized coral and petrified wood among other things. His worker’s daughter’s boyfriend introduced him to grape agate. He is an interesting person who shared many compelling stories with us!

 

• There’s a company that is the largest supplier to crystal shops in the country that has been around since the 70s and we’ve been buying from them for 35 years. A few years ago they branched out to offer fine sterling silver jewelry with stones. We’re very impressed with the quality, selection of stones and affordable prices of their jewelry and bought a whole lot. We were talking with the woman who runs the new jewelry department and found out that she is the daughter of the owner. We were fascinated to learn how they pulled off getting into this facet of the business, since they normally only carried the lower end base metal jewelry and lots of stone specimens like amethyst cathedrals, cut and polished stones, etc. She shared the story of how her father went to the Indian embassy and asked to be connected to the very best jewelry manufacturer in the country. We were impressed by the brilliance and simplicity of this strategy!

 

• She also told us that the manager of another part of the business, whom we’ve known for decades, has been her friend since they were little kids. In 1976 when they were 6 years old, she would come to their house for sleepovers. Her dad would put them to work making agate clocks, adding the hands and the motor to each one. Agate clocks and pen holders were the two items they started the business with and she’s been working for her friend’s dad’s company ever since!

 

• I get a magazine called In Store that’s more for fine jewelry stores, but I like to read it because it has useful articles about running a jewelry store. It often has ads for a jewelry designer named Suzy Landa! (I’m Susan Landa). We normally don’t go to the AGTA show in Tucson because it’s for very high-end jewelry stores that sell the most expensive jewelry with diamonds and precious stones. This year I found out that our sunstone jewelry supplier was selling at that show and I had never met them in person, so we decided to check it out. We walked around to ogle the most amazing gems and jewels you will see anywhere. As we were exploring with our jaws dropping at every turn, we came across Suzy Landa’s booth. I went over and introduced myself. We each had never met another Susan Landa (her actual birth name) and she was blown away. Not only that, our ancestors are from the same place, so we could be distantly related. Ironically, there is yet another jewelry designer named Suzy Landa in Texas. How bizarre is that?!

 

• Two years ago in Tucson, we met a vendor from Barcelona, Spain. It was very timely because our daughter was doing an internship in Barcelona at the time and we were planning on visiting her. It was great to have this connection so we could visit him in his warehouse in Barcelona and see what local goodies we could bring home that he didn’t have at the show. Now our daughter is in Madrid for a year. We are planning to visit her and also go to where the pyrite cubes are mined because it is not that far from Madrid.  We saw our Barcelona friend again this year at the show and found out that he just bought the pyrite cube mine! What amazing timing! He’s going to arrange for us to visit the mine (normally closed to visitors) and we are very excited!

 

There are a few more stories, but this post is getting long, so I’ll leave it at that. We are so grateful that we got to experience so much gem show magic this year. I hope you enjoyed these stories and so look forward to sharing all the goodies we got for you!