2011 Tucson Gem & Mineral Show

Rocks & Relics once again rolled into the annual Tucson Gem & Mineral Show and rocked as usual. This year the show ran from Thursday to Sunday, February 10th through 13th. In addition to owner Dave Richter the rest of this year's crew consisted of Dave's long-time friend Joe Piuma as well as Laurie Hutchinson, Erin Cunningham and your's truly. Joe has helped Dave oft in the past, this was my second year assisting Dave at this show and this was Erin and Laurie's inaugural visit to the show. The show which was held in the Tucson Convention Center went really well with minimal hassles beyond the usual stuff to be expected and we all had a great time. Well, other than the b.s. parking ticket I got down the street from the Epic Cafe. Apparently, Tucson needed my money more than I did. Anywho, the weather largely cooperated unlike last year's storminess and the crowd did their job showing up and spending money. However, it was a different sort of crowd than in 2010 for whatever reason. The following photos are shown in the order they were taken spread out over the four day show.

Dave in his element.

Our left display case.

Joe dutifully manning his station.

Erin (right) assisting a customer purchasing stone beads.

Our right display case.

Erin greatly upgraded our system and service with our beads.

Joe taking care of business.

This pendent was created by one of our customers with an fossil ammonite purchased in our booth the day before and proudly shown to us the next day.

Dave and Erin in our booth.

We had an overwhelming amount of cool stuff.

Erin was a huge asset providing what we were missing in 2010.

We certainly brought the quartz...

...and we definitetly brought the fossils!

That wood display shelf had one more week before it died.

Photo credit: Kim Patrick Noyes, Paso Robles, CA.