Living in Tucson, I've had the opportunity to shop the largest gem and mineral show in the world in my own back yard. I've been collecting from mineral shows since I was a kid. This is the first mineral I remember ever buying when I was around 8, some pieces of opal I've kept in a jar of water:

Yes, that gross water flotsam has been in there since the 1990s. I started collecting seriously after college and fifteen years later feel like I'm starting to get it down to a science.

This advice is for people new to mineral shows, and more high-level about how to tackle the show and make decisions about purchases. Mineral shows can be loud, busy, overwhelming environments! It's also proven science that your decision-making muscles get exhausted with use, so try to exercise more restraint as the day wears on.

What day is best to go?

1. Go on the first day of the show

Day 1 means seeing all the best before deals are picked over.

2. Go on the last day of the show

This feels awful to say, but at the end of the show vendors start getting a bit desperate and making deals, especially if you’re buying multiple items. Everything that doesn’t sell is going to cost them money to store it or ship it, so the more inventory they unload the better. If it’s a slow show they may be trying to just break even with their costs before end-of-day.

3. Go every day in between

This is for the FOMO folks in the house. Some vendors may not be set up yet on day one. At shows where people move a lot of volume, you may only be seeing a fraction of a vendor’s inventory on any given day. As pieces sell, they are constantly putting out new stuff and rearranging flats. This is the most thorough approach… and also the most costly (in total $$ anyway), but you are more likely to stumble on good value deals and spot things you missed on day one!

What does a noob need to know?

4. Cash is king

International vendors at mineral shows may not be able to process cards because there are legal licensing requirements, so have cash on hand. Even where you can use a card you are much more likely to get a discounted price if you can pay cash. Processing fees aren’t cheap. Cards will cost the vendor money to accept your payment, so it is reasonable for some vendors to refuse cards or have a purchase minimum. A lot of vendors won't want to mess around with payment apps like Venmo. Come prepared!

5. It will take time to develop an eye

Sometimes you'll pay too much. Sometimes you'll pay way too little. It seems to even out over time, so don't take part too hard—just live and learn!

The more you see, the more you’ll learn. I’d like to say practice makes perfect, but some people seem to innately have a better eye for detail than others. When I was learning gemology, I recall having classmates hold up what to me was a smack-you-in-the-face-obvious glass bead with clearly manmade color patterns. They’d sigh and mutter “what is this” while flipping pages in their text and I’d be stunned. Point being, part of what “developing an eye” really means is learning your limit in terms of your confidence in buying from sources of unknown trustworthiness.

Don’t be hard on yourself for buying dumb stuff in your early days of collecting! It’s all part of the process and I hold onto them in the same way I keep childhood knick knacks.

6. You will probably at some point be duped.

Again it’ll take time to develop an eye for what is dyed, glass, lab-grown, compiled, and leaverite (it's just a rock, you better leave 'er right there). When you think you’ve learned it all, they come out with new phonies and alterations. Most dealers mean well but even they can be duped and inadvertently pass the duping on to you. Best you can do is learn what real minerals look like so your spidey sense will tell you when something seems off.

Look at this dipshit. They told me it was real lol. And I believed them lol. I knew it was off but I ignored my instincts and made a bad call at the end of a long day. Now it’s my expensive learnin’ rock because it’s actually lab-grown dyed quartz. These things are everywhere now and usually sold as genuine!

I can't decide whether to buy this!

7. Look at the back

Not the back of the show, the back of the mineral. If you are borderline on buying a specimen, take a look at all angles. One time I unwrapped a fluorite I had purchased so the backside was facing up. I was really confused and thought they had given me the wrong piece because the back had a different type of fluorite. I hadn’t even realized I actually got a cheap deal for a two-in-one specimen!

Look upon my two-sided fluorite

8. Keep in mind it will not get cheaper

I have seen many types of materials mined out within my 15 years of collecting. It’s not so much that things disappear from the market—I mean that does happen too!—but more often the material entering the market is lower and lower quality while the rare nicer specimens still available skyrocket in price. You’ll start wistfully reminiscing about incredible specimens you could have bought in your youth, if only you’d had the foresight to not think $120 was “too much” at the time… I have a spessartine on smoky quartz I picked up for $30 for at my very first mineral show back in 2009 and now see similar material going for hundreds of dollars!

🚨 Pay attention if someone says a mine has closed or a source is dry. Prices can rise dramatically in subsequent years!

9. Okay sometimes it gets cheaper

New finds happen. Market changes occur. For example, cheap labor in fluorite mining in China has flooded the market with inexpensive (and sometimes altered!) material. The average hobbyist mineral collector will not have enough of a finger on the pulse to know where to expect market prices to go though. More often than not I’d err on the side of assuming it’ll cost more in the future. If it’s anything man-made, it will almost definitely get cheaper as technology improves.

How do I know if something is a bad purchase?

10. No consolation prizes

We’ve all been there: you ask the price for a specimen only to learn someone in your financial situation shouldn’t be breathing on it. Disappointed, you write it off and start looking at ones that are more in your budget. You compromise on size and quality and find a specimen that'll... do I guess.

Don’t buy it as a compromise, try to wait until a piece really “speaks” to you! The corollary:

11. Don’t buy it just because you can afford it

You come across a specimen of a mineral you like that is normally pricey, except this one is cheap! It’s also mediocre. But you could own it! Nope. You’ll likely want to upgrade and will end up feeling as though these junky quality specimens are cluttering up your collection as it develops.

12. Go big or go home

Don’t be a cheap-ass when making decisions. If specimen A is $45 and specimen B is $55 but wow $55 is a lot for a rock… well here I am giving you permission to just do it! Compare not only the price, but the difference in how happy each would make you versus the difference in price. If specimen B only costs $10 more you but really prefer it, just do it!

I try to think of a comparison: what is something lame I would spend $10 on without batting an eyelash? It puts your spending habits into perspective; I can often think of a recent example like buying clothing that doesn't fit and never getting around to returning it and then spilling food on it so it's irreparably stained. You really gonna drop $40 every month on a gym you don't go to, but turn around and think $40 is too much for a cool rock you'll have the rest of your life? Is this where you want to try to be thrifty?? Priorities, my dude.

13. Don’t buy it just because you want it

Okay, I have to put some brakes on all of this enabling. Sometimes you have to walk away because something is just too much: too much for your wallet, or overpriced for the piece. I use two techniques:

• Treat mineral-buying like a casino: go in knowing your spending limit, and try not to exceed it. I have not yet succeeded but it at least gives me a goalpost to exceed by 40–80%.
• Once you have some experience you’ll gain a feel for what a “reasonable” price will be for a piece. Pre-determine the price you’re willing to pay before asking. If the vendor comes back with a higher number, walk away. I’m not saying they are overcharging, just that this will help you tell how much it’s worth to you. (I do the same clothes shopping!)

Final words of wisdom...

14. Keep the tags with your specimen

I know all the different labels look messy on the mineral shelf but you will not remember what that is, when you got it, where it’s from, who you bought it from, or how much you paid for it. You also won't be able to remember which label went with which specimen. I write notes on the back of the label and keep it under or with the specimen.

15. Seriously. You won’t be able to remember

OoOOOooh you think you won’t care? Please for the love of god at least take a picture of it with the label or something. Future you is going to resent you for this, you will distinctly remember you were warned and have only yourself to blame.