Exposition

By K eith O ’C onnor Special to The Republican

Laura Delano turned a childhood fascination with “rocks” into a business that promotes shows around the country that celebrate the earth’s bounty like this weekend’s East Coast Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show.

The annual event opens its doors on Friday in the Better Living Center on the grounds of the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield with an expanded wholesale section for dealers only in the Young Building.

Dealers, miners, artisans, and crafters will be selling a variety of collectibles ranging from 50-cent tumbled stones to $50,000 mineral specimens, from inexpensive beads to designer creations, and from shark’s teeth to fossil skeletons.

Natural mineral specimens, fossils, gemstones, beads, jewelry, meteorites, crystals, geodes, decorator items, and lapidary supplies and equipment are among the items for sale.

“There is a big interest and market today in metaphysical crystals with healing properties, and we will have dealers at this year’s show selling many of these gemstones,” Delano said.

The show will feature some 200 dealers between both buildings from all 50 states and Canada, as well as from Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Spain, Uruguay, Russia, Africa, Morocco and other faraway locations.

This year Delano will be stepping out from behind the scenes to be a participant in the show. The promoter and collector will exhibit her own collection of gems, minerals and fossils from all over North America, Europe and beyond including calcites, quartz, and fluorites, as well as other exotic and rare specimens that she has self-collected and purchased over the past 30 years.

“We are the only show to adopt the concept of a one-person exhibition filling 50 cases of specimens from their personal collection.

David Bunk, a mineral dealer from Colorado who knows all the great collectors, is my exhibit chair who has identified and secured collectors to showcase their collections at our shows, including my own this year,” Delano said.

It was her dad who got her interested in collecting and encouraged Delano in the hobby.

“Life often gets in the way for some collectors from high school to college and from marriage to children. My children knew vaguely about my interest in rocks and stopped to visit with a dealer selling minerals at an arts and crafts fair in Longmeadow, where we were living at the time. They gave me his business card and that is when I went back to collecting for many years from collecting in the field to purchasing items at mineral shows, where I was able to self-educate myself about minerals, where they come from, and what constitutes a good specimen,” she said.

Flash forward some years and Delano found herself as the site manager for all of the mineral shows across the country held by Martin Zinn Expositions, including the East Coast Gem, Mineral and Fossil Show. When Zinn retired, he sold his production company to her.

Now owner of what was renamed LLD Productions since 2018, Delano noted she is excited to share her personal collection with those attend- ing her West Springfield show.

Among the many “gems” to be found in the 50 cases on display is a uniquely-shaped green specimen of fluorite — think of a totally disjointedlooking Borg cube from the Star Trek series — from the William Wise Mine in New Hampshire, which is no longer commercially mined.

“It’s my number one favorite. You just don’t find gems of this quality and it is one of the finest fluorites I feel to ever come out of the mine,” Delano said.

Another favorite of hers on display will be a naturally-formed yellow botryoidal fluorite which looks like a sunny-side egg on a bed of sparkling quartz crystals of the amethyst variety. She purchased the prized-possession, which emanates for Nasik, India,