Trip to Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines 2023 - Part 2
Day 3, 4, 5 – Ste-Marie-Aux-Mines
Intro
When I got to the French side of the Rhine and glided through the motorway my heart pounded like crazy – I was nervous, excited, curious about the experience that was about to come. But first, I headed to the camping where I met some long known and new mineral friends from Hungary. We had a few hours talking and laughing before everyone hit the bed in the tents (or in the car) awaiting the next day – Wednesday, June/21/2023. (See the first part of my trip HERE.)
The three days at SMAM
On Wednesday one of my Hungarian friends was kind enough to bring me to the show and briefly show me around. We met some well known faces from Hungary once again and before I knew it I started to hover over the surrounding tables in the building. As I started to immerse myself into the inventory of the dealers I completely lost track of time – I bet you’ve also experienced this phenomenon before. It feels like time stops (eventhough it flies by) and there’s no hunger, thirst to be felt, you’re just smoothly floating on a cushion of cloud and there’s nothing to be disturbed by. At least that’s what I felt. On the first day I thought it’ll eventually fade away on the next days but the feeling persisted until I felt that „I’ve seen everything” – though in those 3 days I couldn’t even visit the Gem Show!
I met so many amazing people I look up to, so many new friends out of the blue and some of the guys and girls I heard about from different sources, like the YMC (Young Mineral Collectors) group members of Facebook that it’s difficult to count! The experience was very humbling to me because I knew that each and every person I met there knows something about this „sport” better than I do. Great exchanges, chats and business card swaps took place. If you’re in love with this hobby I can only recommend you to visit this show at some point! In each year an exhibition takes place and it failed to disappoint – fantastic showcases of various minerals were carefully set up by well known and less (or close to not) known collectors but each case presented to visitors with specimens to be awed by.
Wonderful Elbaites from both it’s type locality and from Morocco from the recent finds… even a Morganite from the Beni Bouzra pegmatite by which I was very surprised (to the right at the back on the below picture).
I was so caught up with absorbing the amazing specimens (and I was so lazy to dig out the camera from my backpack and put it back each time) that I barely made some pictures. (Note: I do not get paid by any of the mineral dealers whose specimens I show you here. I blurred out the prices because I didn’t ask for permission to show you some of their specimens therefore I felt obliged to keep the names of their companies on the picture if I have their labels photographed. I’d say it’s fair. If you know any of them would not want people to publish their specimens, please let me know via email! But this is not an advert for them, these pictures are shown for our delight only. So enjoy them! 😊)
A huuuuge Fluorite cluster from France which was just shy of unbelievable!
Good bye Alsace. I grew to love you.
Day 6 - Rocking the dump of Grube Clara
Having spent three wonderful days at Sainte-Marie on my journey back to Hungary I felt the urge to grab the opportunity of visiting the dump of the Clara mine in the Black Forest of Germany. I actually went through a narrow but breathtakingly gorgeous route through the Black Forest first to the entrance of the real mine by accident so I had to drive from Oberwolfach to Wolfach and get back on track so to say. The dump can be visited by anyone with the right safety equipment (yes, wear them!) for a small fee and quite some people tried their luck that day. Seeing the excitement of theirs I didn’t need much time to get into the mood and start hammering.
Long story short I didn’t find anything mindblowing – some pale bluish purple sub-centimeter Fluorites, every now and then 1-2 cm blue Fluorite cubes sitting in the Quartz vug but I was unable to extract them unharmed. Other than that some tarnished Chalcopyrites, Barytes and some micromounts which went through analysis. Actually, one of them was quite interesting as I suspected it's one of the Agardite species and indeed it was, according to the analysis it's Agardite-Ce for which Grube Clara is the Type Locality. :) What a cool score!
That's it folks! :) Thanks for reading!
