2008 Monterey Gem & Mineral Show Pt. 2

Part One
Part Three

Having worked late last night preparing our booth we were able to sleep in just a bit.
It was nice having a room across the street from the show so that I simply walked leaving my truck parked at the Travel Lodge.
What little work was left to do to prepare for the show was quickly accomplished and we were ready to go.

For me it was a good thing I was ready at the opening buzzer as my first customer was a hard-bargaining Asian gal from the Chinese Cultural Center in Monterey who dropped a large sum on me purchasing ocean jasper slabs and an egg and a sphere along with some other things.
Normally, I don't mention the race of people unless it is relevant to the story I am relating as is the case here.
She was one of the most abrasive customers I ever dealt with and drove such a bare-knuckle bargainer that I was starting to get put off but each time she nearly nearly caused me to snap at her she seemed to sense it and drew back.
She whittled me down to the bone price-wise but I still turned a modest profit, but I only let her walk out of my booth with the items as I needed the money wanting to start off on a good pace and I was tired of lugging around for well over a year the items she got so I was mildly contented with the outcome.

Had I not needed her money I might have employed a tactic Jack Daggett of Bend, Oregon, once employed at the Tuscon Show where an Asian-American feigning to be an Asian-non-American came up to him and started putting down his material but actually was interested in it but hoped to low-ball him. Jack got really pissed and started moving the price up on the guy to his shock and horror and rattled him and said "you crazy" and left. Later on they kissed and made up and Jack realized the guy was an American and spoke English just fine.

However, what this experience highlighted for me was something I before now had only heard anecdotally from other dealers and that is the cultural difference between Americans and non-Americans, particularly Asians and most particularly East Asians when it comes to negotiating.
What we Americans would consider rude is not only not rude in their culture, but expected.
The problem is that this is America and America is best as a melting pot, not a multi-cultural entity. Multi-culturalism does not work: just look at Islamicization of Europe.

Anywho, that did get me off on the right track which carried success on throughout the day as traffic was fairly evenly busy all day and folks were apt to spend money. It appeared everybody was doing well at the show thus reenforcing the concept of rising tides lift all boats.

I had the privilege of meeting a fine young American soldier named Stephen Covell who is a local guy (grew up in the Monterey area) visiting from his current home in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he serves our nation as a medic in the 573rd Cavalry of the 82nd Airborne Division.
Stephen is quite a young man who chose to enter the military and serve his nation for a variety of commendable personal reasons.
He has already served one tour in Iraq and awaits being sent back there or going to Afghanistan in the near future.
I marveled at the degree to which this guy really seemed to have his shit together for one so relatively young and I was quite impressed and heartened to know such young men are still out there despite the general decline of our society and civilization.
Stephen plans not to follow the medical slant of his current career but after the service pursue a career in journalism.
He is also a musician whose work can be experienced on Purevolume.com and Myspace.com.

Speaking of the military, the Air Force Thunderbirds flew their F-16's over us again today in a rather unnerving fashion as well as some civilian passenger aircraft.
In spite of the unnerving nature of such powerful jets flying so forcefully right over us at such low altitude there is something rather exhilarating about it, too.
One of the planes on one particular fly-over was so low that his backwash stirred up dust and leaves lying on the ground in and around the fairgrounds which caused something to get picked up and blown into my eye.

I learned today that what I thought was a lazurite crystal I am selling may actually be a pseudomorphed Afghanite crystal that is now composed of lapiz lazuli per dealer Claud Huber.
As usual he had an amazing display of beautiful minerals.

The Richter's Rocks & Relics booth was busy all day and all weekend per usual which is no surprise given all the cool stuff for great prices they offer there. They have an amazing Gibeon meteorite I am coveting and hope to buy if I make as much money tomorrow as I did today.
This thing is somehow naturally flat having shattered along some sort of internal crystaline plane.

At the end of a fruitful day we all packed up for the night which didn't require much as this is a very safe venue overnight with Carmel Valley Gem & Mineral Society officer and show dealer chair Matt Beiwer spending the night in the room with all the booths so we all left feeling secure.

Mike and I decided to have Mexican food for dinner and have it where we had dinner last year with one of his friends the middle night of the show so we drove down to Seaside and looked for that place and found Marisco's Puerto Nuevo which was great once again.

After that we retired to our motel where I blogged and emailed before joining Tequila in bed.

Part One
Part Three