Webmineral Houston Fine Mineral Show Report

2009 Houston Fine Mineral Show Report and Gallery

The Houston Fine Mineral Show is a first time mineral show event. Formerly the Dallas Fine Mineral Show, it has been moved to Houston starting this year. The mineral show venue is patterned after the format used by the Westward Look Show in Tucson. This show, like the Tucson version, features an incredible array of high end minerals for sale to the public with 42 dealers on the show list.

The show is housed in The Galleria area at The Embassy Suites Hotel located west of downtown Houston. So while you are looking at really high dollar minerals there is the opportunity for your non-mineral-loving-spouse to look at really high dollar merchandise just across the street.

To be completely fair, there were a lot of very affordable mineral specimens available from dealers with a quality as-good-as or better than the Tucson Convention Center main show or the Inn Suites. There was very little of the decorator rock category of specimens that is common in Tucson.

As a side note, the Offshore Technology Conference, the world's foremost event dealing with the development of offshore hydrocarbon resources, will be starting on Monday, the day after the Houston Fine Mineral Show closes. The OTC is in the top 10 in terms of attendance in the United States and includes attendees from around the globe with more than 110 countries represented at recent conferences.

Here is the Embassy Suites hotel in the Galleria area. The landmark Transco Tower in the background can be seen for miles. Parking at the hotel is tight so you may have to park in the Galleria and walk to the show.

The central atrium of the Embassy Suites Hotel. The dealer floors are the 2nd and 3rd level of the hotel. A very relaxed and comfortable setting. This Houston venue is much nicer than the Westward Look Fine Mineral Show because only 1/10 of the walking is needed to visit all the dealers.

Dealer listing for the show from the Hotel lobby. Of the 49 listings, 42 of them are for mineral specimen dealers.

First stop was Dan & Dianna Weinrich with this apatite nicely perched on blue fluorite and quartz from Dayu Co., Ganzhou prefecture, Jiangxi Province, China.

Heliodor has a nice supply of these cubic ferroan platinum crystals from Kandyar Massif, Ayan Maya Region, Siberia. The mines that produced these crystals are currently shut down.

Wright's Rock Shop is displaying a selection of these red quartz crystals on pale blue fluorite from Cruangki China.

Edward's Minerals showed this exceptionally fine specimen of lazurite crystals from the type locality, Ladjuar Medam mine, Sar-e-Sang, Afganistan.

Native gold wires on pyrite and calcite from the San Pedro Mine, Santa Fe County, New Mexico, USA. Exceptional Minerals from Florida.

Exceptional Minerals also had these silver ingots from a sunken Spanish Galleon, newly mined silver ingots, and stacks of US silver dollars.

Spherical olmiite crystal clusters from the N'Chwaning II mine, Kalahari, South Africa are available from The Arkenstone.

From KRISTALLE, imagine if you will brilliant, cabinent- to thumbnail-sized gold specimens with or without matrix from Papua New Guinea. However, due to Kristalle's request, these images can only be viewed on Mindat/ Minvision and not on this show report.