The 2008 Paso Robles Rock, Gem & Mineral Show marks the first time in my fledgling career as a gem, mineral, fossil, and artifact dealer that I have done a show three times as this was the first show I ever did when I first did it back in 2006.
This show is also the club show for the Santa Lucia Rockhounds, the first rock club I ever joined.
Anywho, while preparing for the show at home this morning I received a call from outgoing Show Dealer Chair Joyce Baird in which she informed me we would not be having our usual spot at the southeast corner facing the folks coming in from the back parking lot off of 19th Street which annoyed me to hear this late in the game.
She wondered which of two other spots we wanted and I told her I'd meet her up at the venue in 45 minutes so I could look at the situation and give her an answer.
Privately, I hoped I could negotiate my old spot back in addition to seeing what the hell was going on with this.
After gathering some things for the show both at both my house and storage unit we headed up to Paso Robles to set-up and deal with this unexpected drama relating to our booth location.
When we got there I saw my business partner Mike Lyons talking to Manny Hernandez of the Kern County Mineral Society who is a dealer in our show.
Mike quickly related to me how that Joyce had the show lay-out diagram used the past couple of years or longer but didn't show up until later in the morning.
Unfortunately for us, those who physically chalked out the outline of the show had needed to go ahead and do that before she finally showed up and they did so using an older diagram that was a bit different.
This resulted in our newer spot getting consumed by Manny and his older spot and we were thus forced to find another location.
Luckily for us, we were given several options which included the spot Rocks & Relics used last year which was the eastern-most spot on the outside adjacent to 19th Street which was across the aisle to the southeast from our spot last year.
The advantage for that for us is its proximity to where we were last year as we now have a following and want to be in or near where people remember us being in the past along with the visibility this spot will give us as everybody coming in from the back parking lot where the skate park is will reach us first.
We could have taken location #1 up front by the Pioneer Museum which would have been good but it would not have been where folks expect to see us and I just feel better being at the other end.
Besides, now I won't have to be next to Manny and his wife giving me crap about keeping my dog's water bowl full as they like to harassingly do to me each show we do.
After taking care of that and dumping what we brought with us the first trip, to wit, the infrastructure of our booth such as tables, cloths, tarps, clamps, displays and some flats of material we headed over to Great American Antiques at 13th & Spring Streets in Paso Robles in order to raid the booth of David Richter's Rocks & Relics for stuff to sell this weekend which we did purchasing a large polished piece of Indonesian petrified hardwood for $65 which we will sell for $85.
I also purchased a polished up crystal of rutilated quartz for $14 from Richter along with three mineral specimens (Illinois fluorite, kyanite, Tampa Bay Brain Coral) from another vendor there to sell at the shows this weekend and next weekend in Monterey.
After that we headed on home to have some lunch and ready another load for the show which we did. We also dropped by the bank for cash for the show and shipped an eBay order.
After taking care of that and dumping what we brought with us the first trip, to wit, the infrastructure of our booth such as tables, cloths, tarps, clamps, displays and some flats of material we headed over to Great American Antiques at 13th & Spring Streets in Paso Robles in order to raid the booth of David Richter's Rocks & Relics for stuff to sell this weekend which we did purchasing a large polished piece of Indonesian petrified hardwood for $65 which we will sell for $85.
I also purchased a polished up crystal of rutilated quartz for $14 from Richter along with three mineral specimens (Illinois fluorite, kyanite, Tampa Bay Brain Coral) from another vendor there to sell at the shows this weekend and next weekend in Monterey.
After that we headed on home to have some lunch and ready another load for the show which we did. We also dropped by the bank for cash for the show and shipped an eBay order.
Following that we headed back up to Paso Robles for our final run of the day.
After loading up for this run I realized we would need to drop by my storage unit for one more load on the way up tomorrow morning which will consist mostly of lapidary rough from San Simeon Creek (jasper/quartz and jasper/agate and just plain jasper) and Bullard's State Beach at the Coquille River in Oregon (petrified myrtle wood).
I'll also need to track down some glass cleaner and paper towels for Mike's display case.
I have sold so many of my gemstones on eBay this Summer that I won't have to fool with taking them out and displaying each and every one of them in the glass display and end up selling few if any to my discouragement as happened for too long over the past nearly year and a half.
I have had so little luck with gemstones that I'm getting out of the gemstone business altogether.
Contrariwise, I have had so much luck with lapidary rough despite having so little of it that I am going to focus more on that in the future as well as on my other successful venture: selling rare and obscure minerals on eBay.
I hope to pick up some such material from Dale Harwood and Tom DeMaris at this show.
Speaking of which, we purchased a few things from Dale today even before he had finished his set-up, to wit, two Almandine Garnet clusters and one awesome little Illinois Fluorite cube.
Tom remembered to purchase and bring to this show a couple of t-shirts commemorating the wildfires this Summer in Trinity County that he picked up for us after we asked him to do so at the Nipomo Show last month. Tom has an amazing ability to remember such things despite all the things he has to think about in his life.
He did something similar earlier this year when he offered me an amazing Canyon Diablo Meteorite for a mere $150 at the Bakersfield Rock & Gem Rendezvous last April.
The show was so horrible for me I could not afford to pay him so he kept it for me until the Nipomo Show last month in which he remembered to bring it for me.
On our second trip to Paso Robles today we dropped everything off and got our tables arranged the way we wanted and put things generally where they will go without actually setting anything out for security reasons, something that will be more of an issue this year as we are outside next to the street instead of in an interior spot surrounded by folks in travel trailers with yip-yip dogs that bark at every sound throughout the night.
After that we walked around and looked at what the other dealers/vendors had out and visited with those whom we consider friends like the aforementioned Tom DeMaris as well as Gary and Janice Robertson of Gary's Jewelry not to mention Ernie DeFever of the Salinas Valley Rock & Gem Club.
From Gary and Janice we learned that Andy D. will be at this show which means more wonderfully bizarre Andy stories will be created I'm sure.
