The NY/NJ MIneral, Fossil, and Gem Show 2014

At age three, there's  justification in saying  "It's a great show," or better perhaps, "likely to evolve into a great show." The NY/NJ Mineral, Fossil, and gem show has grown quickly. According to the NY/NJ EZ-GUIDE distributed by its organizers, Eons Expos, LLP, the number of booths has gone from 115  in 2012 to 270 last year, to a projected 340 booths this year. The New Jersey Convention and Expo Center in Edison, New Jersey that hosts it has a capacity of 591 booths. Eons Expos aims to fill all of them by 2017 with dealers of minerals, fossils, gems, and related attractions.  If successful,, the NY/NJ Mineral, Fossil, and Gem Show will be bigger than  "The Big Show," in Tucson, where the Convention Center is said to hold 450 booths.

We photographed our cover image at about 11 A.M. on Friday, April 11, during the first hour of the 2014 Show. This was hardly the time to expect large numbers of attendees. Rather, the hour allowed for plenty of space in which to navigate comfortably with great opportunities for grabbing first pickin's.  However meager in number, those  present at this time included enough serious buyers to bring smiles to the faces of many dealers very quickly.

What impressed  me most and caught  my attention before taking in anything else in the Expo Center were display cases housing "The Best of the Best of the Northeast,"  described in the EZ-GUIDE AS  " the finest mineral specimens collected from eleven northeast U.S. States." These cases were midway along the wall to the right heading in from the facility's entrance. Out of 30 cases, about half exhibited suites of  minerals mostly from New Jersey and New York along with a Maryland suite from the collection of Fred Parker. The other half of these cases were devoid of minerals.  Since noticeably fewer than eleven states were represented, it seemed possible that the cases without minerals would be filled for the next two days of the show.

Through a door leading to behind the cases, there  was a "junior ballroom where the Franklin Mineral Museum and the Sterling Hill Mining Museum co-hosted a magnificent display of dazzlingly fluorescent specimens. In a section adjacent to the display, they offered additional fluorescent minerals for sale at very reasonable prices, giving prospective buyers  access to fluorescent lamps to check them out.

Another  room just a short distance away housed The Fine Mineral Gallery featuring "$10 million worth of the world's rarest and most exquisite minerals and gemstones." Most  were being offered for sale by about 16 high-end dealers, among them Arkenstone, Stonetrust, Miner's Lunchbox, and  Cornerstone Minerals. The dealers in this room contributed to a relatively greater proportion of dealers selling fossils and jewelry--- as opposed to minerals--- in the main hall.

In the Fine Mineral Gallery, the only minerals not for sale were those in the beautifully curated booth of the Maine Mineral Museum. The amazing specimens on display here may have afforded a partial explanation for some of the cases in the main hall not graced with minerals.  Particularly impressive was the enormous and perfect amethyst specimen from Sweden, Maine, pictured at left.

For sure, there was plenty happening here at the NY/NJ Mineral, Fossil, and Gem Show to set it apart from other shows in the eastern United States. Among its exhibits were a 38 foot Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, another that allowed attendees to touch rocks from the moon and Mars, and for the first time out of Germany, the world's finest collection of "weird, 400-million-year-old Devonian Bundenbach fossils." There was even a booth where the cast from  The Weather Channel's TV show Prospectors was hawking their finds from Mount Antero.

With so many attractions, the  NY/NJ Mineral, Fossil, and Gem Show's stature should improve in the future.  Lowell Carhart, Russell Carhart, and Christine Coyle, the team of siblings comprising Eon Expos LLC, have  lofty ambitions. Their goal for the year 2016 is to become "the largest annual show of its kind in the United States." If successful in reaching the previously  mentioned goal of filling all 591 booths at the New Jersey Convention and Expo Center by 2017, they should be able to boast of having organized "the third largest annual show of its kind in the world."

The trio has demonstrated the  level of experience, staying power, and success to make it happen. They note that their Denver Coliseum show, launched in 2009, had "become the largest mineral and fossil show in the U.S by its fifth (2013) year."  In Tucson,  the 22nd Street Show, which they started up in 2011, has now become the third largest mineral and fossil show in Tucson. The NY/NJ Mineral, Fossil, and Gem Show is a different kind of event: glitzier and with more diverse attractions, than either of these shows. Such sizzle should contribute significantly to their efforts to reach this goal, all the happy dealers even more so.

Remarkable Finds Amidst Cobbles in Baltimore, MD's Herring Run

Alana Benkowski has an eye that spots four leaf clovers pretty much at will. Her eye has proven just as sharp for spotting crystals in water-polished cobbles. She collects them in the alluvial deposits of Herring Run near where it flows beneath Baltimore's Inner Harbor Tunnel Thruway. The site is but a short walk across the flood plain adjacent to her home in East Baltimore's Armistead Gardens neighborhood.

Alana has been gathering these cobbles with a passion for several years. Driving her hobby is an intense curiosity regarding the identification of what she's been finding. Her Bible has been a much pageworn edition of the National Audubon Society's Field Guide to Rocks and Minerals, and more recently the Internet. That is where she found our Maryland Minerals website, and contacted us last month.

With no training and little formal education, Alana has the sensibility of a locality expert regarding what to look for and how to find it along this brief stretch of Herring Run. With no bedrock exposures in the area, however, everything she finds originated upstream and beyond in places where the geology is different. The diversity of the species along with curiosity as to where they originated is what most draws her to this hobby.

Pictured below are a few of her finds.




Gemmy Epidote in Quartz









Clinozoisite (Micro crystals in vug in water-polished quartz)

A container of Schorl (Tourmaline Family)crystals in water-polished quartz.

Chromite in serpentinite (Peacock Ore)







Micro Pyrite Crystal on Garnet in Cockeysville Marble







Fulgurite









Graphite (lower right of specimen)





When speculating as to where such non-indigenous  rocks originated, knowledgeable authorities can often be expected to hedge their bets. Here are a few thoughts:

EPIDOTE 

After studying some maps, our friend Bob Conkright, who specializes in hydrology for the Maryland Geological Survey, offered the following theory regarding a possible source for the epidote and possibly the clinozoizite. That is, of course, on the assumption that our "clinozoisite" isn't simply a lighter coloured epidote. He noted that several miles upstream, Herring Run flows through exposures of the Baltimore Gabbro complex, which is known to host epidote.

CLINOZOISITE 

As a member of the epidote family,  clinozoisite could be present in the Baltimore gabbro as well. Both epidote and clinozoisite tend to crystallize inside vugs where they enjoy some protection as water and sand polish the surfaces of the rocks bearing them.  

CHROMITE IN SERPENTINITE

Almost certainly, these  pieces originated in the Bare Hills serpentine barrens in Baltimore County. The Barrens are adjacent to the Baltimore Gabbro Complex. It is reasonable to assume that over many years, such material could have traveled by stream or through flooding in a southerly direction toward where Herring Run flows through the Baltimore Gabbro Complex. 

SCHORL

This is the only no-brainer: Herring Run cuts through plenty of schorl bearing pegmatite. The specimen in our post of May 11, 2012  was collected about three miles upstream from where Alana collected these cobbles. 

PYRITE ON GARNET

This specimen is curious because the matrix, which our photomicrograph all but ignores, appears to be Cockeysville Marble. It is unlikely that streams or flooding leading from Cockeysville Marble outcrops would carry any it in a direction leading to Herring Run. Further, such soft and relatively soluble material would likely be water polished and/or dissolved away long before it could travel this far. Almost certainly this piece and a couple others that Alana collected made their way south by truck before landing somewhere upstream in Herring Run.  

FULGURITE

Assuming our identification is correct, this one  raised some eyebrows, simply because fulgurites are rarely found hereabouts. However, they are formed when lightning strikes sand, and there's plenty of sand along Herring Run, particularly in the area where this piece was found. For that matter, a hot electric wire could have done the trick. 

GRAPHITE

By all accounts, this is the most mysterious find of all. To the best of our knowledge, graphite has never been reported at any locality from which one would expect that it could end up in Herring Run. The closest place of which we're aware that graphite has been collected is in Harford County. From there, it would most likely find its way into the Chesapeake Bay before it could get to Herring Run.

Regardless of various theories as to origin of any of these rocks, Bob Conkright, shortly after mentioning the the Baltimore Gabbro,  offered another insight: "Of course, Mother Nature has had millions of years to erode bedrock in the Piedmont, transport it and polish it along the way, to be deposited on the outwash deposits of the coastal plain." And after a moment's hesitation, he added: "But not that (Cockeysville) marble."