I went to Tucson at the Beginning of February. It was a work trip, and it was fun, but it required a lot of planning. I wanted to give you some pointers if you ever plan on going.
First thing you will need is a lot of money, a budget and a list of things you need or want. There are over 43 shows and many of the shows have 100-1000 vendors. You can technically do one show a day and never see it all. So don't worry you won't see it all, realize that and move on.
I checked out the shows ahead of time and made a list in priority of what shows I had to see and who I wanted to check out at each one.
We packed one whole suitcase with bubble wrap, flat rate boxes and wrapping tape.
I shopped from morning to night, from show opening to closing. Then at the end of the day I would finally eat dinner, take a dip in the pool/jacuzzi at the hotel. Then I would be up for hours packing what I purchased that day.
I also kept an expense log, on it I put what I got where and what I spent at each vendor. In addition to the log, if I saw a vendor I wanted to purchase from in the future I took a business card & wrote on the back of the card what I liked that they had and a price range or contact name if needed.
I shipped 7 boxes ahead of time, which beat me back to the shop. I realized on the third day that I needed more then the flat rate boxes would allow. I had found a fabulous large Druzy Red Amethyst with Calcite Crystals. This was way too large then the flat rate boxes. This was the day I decided to get a truck and have pallets delivered to the shop
(Earthlight, Inc.) I found one of the shops that I bought a lot of merchandise from and arranged the trucking thru them. I had to pack and round up everything that I purchased for the next few days - until the day before we left town. Then the morning we were to leave we delivered all of the other items and added them to the boxes already purchased and palletized it all for shipping. Since the money was spent and the truck was packed, we browsed around and only purchased a small amount of Amber the last day, that we could carry onto the plane. We only had a couple of hours to shop around then off to the airport and back home.
I was only in Arizona 6 days- next year I will try for two weeks. I just need to save up more money, and then I can stay longer and go to more shows. Fabulous.
The pictures are from the trip, with my daughter and some awesome finds that we did not purchase
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Ok so last weekend I went on a field trip to Kalama, WA. with my rock club East Kingco Rock Club we had lots of fun. Granted I dug for 8 hours and was exhausted by the end of it. I did get almost a whole bucket full of carnelian & various agates. I also got some crystals and jaspers. If you have not joined your local rock club yet, get to it for lots of fun and exercise. My daughter also brought a friend and they had fun playing around a creek and collecting easy finds, no digging involved. Check out a small sample of some of the things I found that day. Some of these I will sell rough in my rock shop, others I will tumble up, or bag for others to tumble, so much fun. Enjoy.
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