Bologna Mineral Show 2015

As every year the Bologna Show took place in the first week end of March. Lot of exhibitors and friends were there on thursday 5th to set up. My area was in the same row as in the last 10 years and I share my location with my friend Gilberto Maggioni.

We spent almost 3 hours to download our material and to take it inside the Arena where the exhibit took place. A very large location !

I had a lot of rocks from all over the world but my great love are the pegmatite specimens from isola Elba, Italy. This year was a very peculiar one since at the Bologna Show there was an exhibition of the best specimens from Elba from a private collection (FP).

This short report is to show you some of the specimens from Isola Elba pegmatite veins that were on exhibit. It is well known that no one of the old hystorical quarries are nowadays operated to extract granite, so all the research in the last 30 years have been done on the granite boulders found in the wood or in the creeks all around the San Piero and Sant Ilario villages.

Most of the specimens of this collection has been found over the last 30 years and have to be considered real exceptional specimens since the only comparable ones are from Museum Collections such as the one of the Mineralogical Museum of Firenze, Italy. This collection was aquired in the early 1900 and it is known as the "5000 collection".

A part from the super tourmaline, elbaites  and rubellites, the best and most rare species presented was a super pollucite ! this mineral is quite uncommon since it degrades quicly when exposed to rain and changes of environmental temperature. The specimen exposed had an incredibly large spheroid around 2 cm in diameter ! a really super specimen !

In regards to the Bologna Show it has to be pointed out that there were a higher amount of italian and european exhibitors, while there was a significant reduction of exhibitors from asiatic countries, mainly from Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. On my opinion this year Show has been of medium-high level for the specimen exposed. Not great novelties, unfortunately! no new finds ! but the visitors have been a lot, especially during saturday and sunday.