Meteorites: They Came from Outer SpaceMeteorite hunter and TV personality Geoffrey Notkin travels the world digging for space rocks

On Saturday afternoon, around 4 pm, we closed the showroom. It was the final day of my thirteenth consecutive show and — unlike the majority of things in the modern world — the Tucson gem shows really do get bigger and better each year. With 4,000+ dealers from practically every country on earth, over forty separate shows, and 50,000+ buyers and visitors, it’s exhausting just to think about trying to see everything, but no amount of browsing and touring can prepare you for the experience of being a Tucson show vendor.

The author outside the Aerolite Meteorites show room with his custom neon sign.
Photo by Jim Breitinger of Utahredrock.

Our showroom, Suite 230 at the lovely InnSuites at Granada and Saint Mary’s was open from 10 am to 6 pm for fifteen consecutive days, plus four more for set up, breakdown, and load out, along with weeks of preparation: selecting specimens for the displays, making ID cards and labels, designing flyers, ads, room signs and handouts. Many evenings we stayed open late, serving wine to our friends and customers, talking space rocks, and listening to Vivaldi or the Two Siberians’ modern take on traditional Russian folk instrumentals. My elegant and cultured showroom partner, Anne Black of Impactika Meteorites in Denver, favors a classical soundtrack, so we’d wait for the evenings she left a little early for business dinners before putting Franz Ferdinand or Van Morrison on the CD player.

A gorgeous highly sculptural 619-gram Gibeon iron meteorite acquired from one of my African contacts during the 2009 gem show

Suite 230 sits at the back of the courtyard, right in the middle, at the top of a flight of concrete stairs. We enjoy a terrific view of the lawn, and I often stared enviously at some of our downstairs colleagues who had the foresight to bring along deck chairs — and the time to use them. There is something reassuring and uniquely “Tucson Show” about a German gemologist and a British fossil dealer drinking Mexican beer under a palm tree on a sunny February afternoon.

With my friend and show room partner Anne Black in Room 230. Photograph by Tim Arbon.

Once again, we were were lucky enough to have excellent neighbors. Low Country Geologic from Charleston, South Carolina, dig their own fossil shark teeth from murky and muddy southern rivers, and always arrive with a staggering display of giant-size fangs from Carcharadon megalodon — the biggest and scariest shark of all time. As is typical of so many rockhounds, our neighbors enjoy a drink the evening, and we were forever running from room to room borrowing corkscrews, trading bottles of wine, and comparing notes on the finest English beers. And it’s in those moments that the show really shines. The sun has set, most of the day customers have gone home, our red, blue and gold neon METEORITES sign glows radiantly in the window. An amazing and eccentric collection of international prospectors, treasure hunters and paleontologists kick back, reflect on the day’s sales, muse about that could-be upcoming “big deal,” and maybe pause for just a moment to notice that they really are part of the greatest show on earth.

Tucson rocks. See you next year, same time, same room, even better space rocks. 49 weeks and counting.

It was back in 1998 that I made my first journey to the Tucson gem and mineral shows. I was living just outside of New York City at the time, and although I had already fallen in love with Arizona as a ten year-old boy, and had traveled extensively across my favorite state in the Union, I’d never actually been to Tucson — the seat of Pima County and a small, eclectic, eccentric, charming city in the Sonoran Desert.

The author at the 2008 Tucson gem show, admiring a large stone meteorite found in the Sahara Desert. Photograph by Lisa Marie, Sirocco Design.

A few months earlier, I returned from a hair-raising three-week meteorite hunting expedition across Chile’s stunningly barren and vast Atacama Desert, in the company of my friend, meteorite hunter Steve Arnold. Steve was living near Tulsa, Oklahoma at the time and we decided to rendezvous in Odessa, Texas, where we did a little hunting at the famous meteorite crater, and then head on to Tucson.

I had read, several times, that the Tucson gem show was the biggest of its kind in the world, and that among the diamonds, dinosaurs, jewelry, crafts, Moroccan rugs and African drums, we would find a number of meteorite dealers and collectors. But nothing could have prepared me for the size and vigor of the show — which is in no way “a” show, but rather more than forty separate shows which run concurrently during the first half of February each year.

After that, I never missed a show. February became the highlight of each year, partly because it’s my birthday month, and partly because I could leave chilly, snowy, dirty New York for a week or two and enjoy gentle winter sunshine in southern Arizona. And look at rocks, all day, every day. What could be better than that?

As the years went by, I became less and less enamored with life in the big city and eventually moved to Tucson permanently. I loved the gem show so much, I figured we might just as well live in the same town. Okay, it wasn’t only the gem show. I love the mountains; the desert; the wild coyotes, bobcats and hawks; cactus forests; and the vibrant Mexican culture and influence. I actually can now good eat good Mexican food, every day, for the rest of my life.

Collectively, the big events are known as the Tucson gem and mineral shows, or showcases. The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show™ was the progenitor of the whole thing. It started back in 1955 and its benevolent parent is the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society. That show continues to this day, is the largest and best-attended of all the different events, and is so vast it is held in the Tucson Convention Center. We call it “The Main Show” and it runs for a long weekend in mid-February. It is very popular with school groups, tourists and collectors.
However, most of the show venues are actually ordinary hotels — retro-fitted for the duration. Thousands of vendors from all over the planet rent rooms and suites, remove the furniture and replace it with display cases, lights, gems, fossils, gold nuggets, meteorites, and the assorted natural history wealth of the world. There are a very few wholesale events which require dealer identification for entry, but by far the majority of shows are free and open to the public, and visiting any of the participating show hotels is a colorful and exciting experience.

I am now an exhibitor at the gem show. What started as my fun and much-anticipated winter jaunt to Tucson, is now a complex and all-consuming business. My meteorite company, Aerolite Meteorites, shares Suite 230 at the InnSuites Hotel (475 North Granada, Tucson, AZ) with Anne Black — a charming French meteorite dealer, and one of the few women in our business. The InnSuites is my favorite of all the show hotels. In addition to a lush green lawn, shady orange trees, a nice pool and decent bar with a dealer-friendly happy hour, the InnSuites features a wide variety of vendors, rather than just one field. Our hotel is the best place for meteorite and fossils, but you can also find egg-sized gold nuggets, ghostly florescent minerals, seashells, and some of the best trilobites in the world.

This year we will open our doors on Saturday, January 31 (just a day before my birthday) and we will remain open all day, every day, until Saturday, February 14. It is a long haul, and very expensive for us. It costs thousands of dollars to rent a suite, pay our assistants, pony up the a show fee to our promoter, eat, drink, and be merry. But it’s what we do, and even though it can be a grind, at times, it’s an inspiring experience to be part of the biggest and best event of its kind in the history of our planet.

As a fun little bonus, last year I designed a special custom METEORITES neon sign for the showroom, and had it manufactured by a local neon artist. It was a big hit. I have always loved neon — one of American’s true original contributions to modern art.

We sell meteorites; impactites; meteorite books and museum catalogs; thin sections; meteorite jewelry, t-shirts, and collectibles; and anything else interesting that we can fit into our room packed, as it is, full of rare and amazing rocks from outer space. We make the most of it: socializing with friends, swapping adventure stories, cracking a bottle of wine in the evening and putting on some mellow jazz around sunset. If you’re in Tucson for the show, please stop by and say hello. It’s a great time, and we’d be delighted if you had the experience of holding a genuine meteorite in your hand for the first time.

Click here to learn all about Arizona’s Tucson gem and mineral show including a Tucson restaurant and dining guide, and a list of featured Tucson show dealers and vendors.

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