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Shiny Object Festival 2005
Aug. 13th, 2005 03:00 amWe attended the Springfield rock and mineral show yesterday. Things got off to a poor start. The plan was to leave at 9:00 and arrive at about 10:30, half an hour after the show opened. That would get us there nice and early, but not actually standing outside in the sun waiting in a line. We left the house about half an hour later than we had planned/hoped, and then hit absurd amounts of traffic on 290 and the Pike. We got to the show at about noon. Ack. Add to this the fact that we were both very tired owing to less sleep than we had hoped for, and we were not exactly filled with delight about the trip so far.
My feet started to hurt about halfway through the show, and it eventually got so bad that I limped for a while. I don't know what brought that on. I didn't think I'd abused them really badly any time recently, but something made them unhappy.
The show itself was just fine, though. Last year we bought half of the available octopus carvings (which was 2), but this year we couldn't really afford to do that since the Carved Obsidian and Opal people had about a dozen. They let me look through the whole bag of them from under the table so I could find the one that I liked best, though. It's good to be repeat business - they recognized us and said hello, and I'm sure they felt better about letting me unwrap and peruse all of these things knowing that I would definitely buy one when I was done. We also got one of the armadillo carvings because they were irresistably cute.
Aside from those, I think the most noteworthy thing we picked up was a really nice piece of celestite from a booth near the back of the show. As much as I normally tend towards vivid colors (azurite, malachite, vanadinite, realgar, dioptase, wulfenite, etc), I really like the cool, subtle color of celestite, and the crystals are an interesting shape. I think I got a real bargain on this particular piece, since I thought it was the best of about 30 available pieces and not even the one with the highest pricetag, and they were all priced pretty reasonably.
Anyone reading this who attends the show - try the wooden frogs in the last row. It's eerie, but some of them really do sound very realistic. I ignored them when I first walked by them, but later heard someone playing with them and went back. I like the little ones better than the big ones, but there were some good ones in both sizes.
This year's Most Unlikely to Sell item was an entire cave bear skeleton that stood about 12-15 feet tall and was priced at $15,900. Close behind that comes the $12,000 piece of rhodocrosite. I don't get that. Sure, it's pretty and all, but $12,000? No. It wasn't even obviosly superior to pieces elsewhere in the show selling for a paltry $2000...which is still way more money than I'd even spend on a single rock, in case you missed the sarcasm loaded onto the word "paltry."
Anyway, it was fun to get more shiny things and critters. No picasso marble this year, though. Maybe next year.
My feet started to hurt about halfway through the show, and it eventually got so bad that I limped for a while. I don't know what brought that on. I didn't think I'd abused them really badly any time recently, but something made them unhappy.
The show itself was just fine, though. Last year we bought half of the available octopus carvings (which was 2), but this year we couldn't really afford to do that since the Carved Obsidian and Opal people had about a dozen. They let me look through the whole bag of them from under the table so I could find the one that I liked best, though. It's good to be repeat business - they recognized us and said hello, and I'm sure they felt better about letting me unwrap and peruse all of these things knowing that I would definitely buy one when I was done. We also got one of the armadillo carvings because they were irresistably cute.
Aside from those, I think the most noteworthy thing we picked up was a really nice piece of celestite from a booth near the back of the show. As much as I normally tend towards vivid colors (azurite, malachite, vanadinite, realgar, dioptase, wulfenite, etc), I really like the cool, subtle color of celestite, and the crystals are an interesting shape. I think I got a real bargain on this particular piece, since I thought it was the best of about 30 available pieces and not even the one with the highest pricetag, and they were all priced pretty reasonably.
Anyone reading this who attends the show - try the wooden frogs in the last row. It's eerie, but some of them really do sound very realistic. I ignored them when I first walked by them, but later heard someone playing with them and went back. I like the little ones better than the big ones, but there were some good ones in both sizes.
This year's Most Unlikely to Sell item was an entire cave bear skeleton that stood about 12-15 feet tall and was priced at $15,900. Close behind that comes the $12,000 piece of rhodocrosite. I don't get that. Sure, it's pretty and all, but $12,000? No. It wasn't even obviosly superior to pieces elsewhere in the show selling for a paltry $2000...which is still way more money than I'd even spend on a single rock, in case you missed the sarcasm loaded onto the word "paltry."
Anyway, it was fun to get more shiny things and critters. No picasso marble this year, though. Maybe next year.
