SWANNANOA, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Gem lovers, fossil hunters and crystal enthusiasts mark your calendars: the Mountain Area Gem and Mineral Association will host its latest trade show this weekend in Swannanoa.
The Summer M.A.G.M.A. Land of Sky Gem Show will take place from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday, June 20, and Saturday, June 21, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday, June 22, at the Land of the Sky Shrine Club, 39 Spring Cove Road.
The free, family-friendly show will feature 35 different vendors from local and national vendors with food and drink options available inside the Shrine Club.
The event is the only major gem show of its kind in the area and occurs four times a year: March, June, September and December. Nonetheless, show organizer Richard Jacquot is modest about the massive undertaking.
“It’s just a gem show,” Jacquot said. “Gems and minerals. We have fossils. We have really nice, quality jewelry people.”
Jacquot introduced Steven Kovalcik, a M.A.G.M.A. vendor who runs Natural Born Jewelers with his wife, Santana.
“They did this for me recently,” Jacquot said, gesturing to his necklace. “That’s a tektite from when a meteorite hits. Melts the earth into glass.”
Tektite isn’t the only unusual material vendors will be trading in this weekend.
“They’ll sell everything you can imagine. Artifacts, gems, crystals, minerals, fossils,” Jacquot listed. “We got guys that specialize in North Carolina minerals, gemstones, rubies and sapphires and emeralds, and that’s Bruce. He’ll be over on that wall. We got guys that import stuff from Nigeria and Madagascar and they come in here and set up. We got people that sell carvings. Just anything you can imagine.”
Jacquot has a passion for trinitite, a mineral created after the Trinity atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945, as well as all sorts of fossils. During the show, Jacquot will set up an educational display of fossils, bones and shark teeth, many of which come from the Cooper River in Charleston, South Carolina.
“I like fossils more than anything,” Jacquot admitted. “They’re something that was walking around that turned to stone. I think that’s cool. I mean, that’s frickin’ old!”
Jacquot told one story about introducing a kid to one of his favorite fossils, dinosaur coprilite.
“You know what coprolite is? Poop. Fossilized poop,” Jacquot chuckled. “I got a bunch of that from the Cooper River from sharks and alligators that are, you know, 12, 15,000-year-old poop, turned to stone, and I’ve got one that looks just like a fresh one. I remember handing it to a girl at the Colburn Museum, and she’s a little girl, about that big.
I said, ‘You want to hold this rock?
She’s like, ‘Oh, that’s neat.’
I said, ‘You know what that is?’ And I told her, she screamed and she threw it, and it went up in the air and it cleared the top of a crystal by about that much, and it didn’t hit it, it went back, and I caught it.
And I said, ‘I’m never handing that to a kid again. At least, not and tell them what it is.'”
Whether you’re a rockhound or merely intrigued by coprilite, the M.A.G.M.A. show is for everyone. For more information, visit www.americanrockhound.com.