The Tucson Gem and Mineral Shows

There's a group of Beadaholique employees that are starting to get pretty excited - we just booked our flights to Tucson at the end of January.  

A lot of you have probably heard about the "Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. "  If you've never been, you could be forgiven for thinking it's just one really big gem and beading show.   But that is rather short of the truth.   The annual Tucson shows (plural), which all happen more or less during the same 2-week period, now number at about 45.  Yes, that's right, forty-five gem, mineral, bead and jewelry shows happening almost simultaneously all over one medium-sized city.  And those are just the officially recognized shows!  More than 50,000 people will come from all over the world to buy and sell jewelry, beads, gems, minerals, fossils and more.  This is THE jewelry event of the year, and it is as fun as it sounds. 

The shows really do sprawl all over the city.  Some of them are small and low-tech, consisting of people selling outside from picnic tables or bags on the ground in parking lots.  Many of the shows are large, professionally produced affairs, occupying community halls, hotel ballrooms and football-field-sized air-conditioned tents.    

We at Beadaholique will be going to see old friends, and make new ones.  We are also going to be presenting a jewelry how-to demo at the Swarovski Elements Event (more on that in a later blog), and, of course, we will be turning over giant tables of gemstone beads, pearls and hand crafted elements to find beautiful things to bring to our customers.  We will be wearing our comfiest shoes and collapsing with groans onto our hotel beds every night.   Sure, all that bead shopping is exhausting, but somebody has to do it!

I would encourage every bead lover to try to go to the Tucson Gem Shows at least once.   If you can, book yourself in a hotel for at least 5 days--you may even want to stay the full two weeks.  Lucky you, if you do!  There is a lot of ground to cover in Tucson, and you never know what you will find, from fossils and geodes, to handcrafted ceramic beads, to imported jewelry, to ten thousand dollar cut diamonds ready for the right jeweller's touch.  One thing you can be sure of, though, is that you will never, ever be able to see it all.