Tucson’s gem shows add punch to city’s economy

click to enlarge Tucson’s gem shows add punch to city’s economy
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Not just another rock show, the tucson Gem and Mineral Show brings in more than $130 million into the city’s economy.

When Paul McCartney opened his “Wings Over America” tour at the Tucson Community Center in 1973 with his then-new concert anthem “Rock Show,” the former Beatles bassist had no idea those words meant something a bit more literal in that particular arena, which was renamed the Tucson Convention Center in 2002.

Since 1972, every year in late January and early February, the TCC has become the epicenter for the world’s biggest actual rock show, attracting hordes of gem geeks and mineral mavens from all around the globe for what has now grown to four weeks of azurites, crystals and garnets. And — at least for the past 16 years — music, too, in the form of the Gem & Jam Festival, one of many piggyback events that have sprung up around the annual gathering of the rockhounds.

“It’s really a success story — and a love story — for Tucson,” said Jane Roxbury, who was hired by Visit Tucson in 2007 to serve as the director of convention services for the visitors bureau and quickly learned the priorities of the job. “I was told, ‘Get to know everything you can about gems, minerals and fossils,’” she added with a laugh.

The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, launched in 1955 in the auditorium of Keeling Elementary School with barely a dozen exhibitors before expanding the following year to the Pima County Fairgrounds, remains the main event of the season, now attracting about 65,000 visitors each year and between 3,000 to 4,000 vendors to the TCC, which has grown along with the event since it relocated there from the fairgrounds in 1972.

But much as the winter Barrett-Jackson classic car auction in Scottsdale has spawned its share of copycat auto events throughout the Phoenix area, the TGMS has given rise to dozens of ancillary shows held around the same time, spread across various locations throughout Tucson.

“We’ve confirmed 43 now in our official gem guide,” Roxbury said. “But we recently added another page to our website listing related events and workshops, and we probably have about a half a dozen right now, including events like the Gem & Jam Festival — which you wouldn’t necessarily call a gem show, but it is a key event that’s taken place in conjunction with the shows for many years. We’re seeing more and more things like that each year.”

Not surprisingly, the economic impact of the gem shows has also exploded over the years, with direct spending by visitors on accommodations, food, attractions and other expenses in Tucson estimated at $131.4 million annually, according to Visit Tucson’s most recent figures.

“It’s been a real gift to Tucson and its economy,” enthused Roxbury. “In 2019 (when the bureau last conducted an economic impact study), we had 65,000 visitors from 42 states and 42 countries. The average stay in Tucson for a vendor selling their wares was more than 19 days, and the average stay for the buyers was a little over nine days.”

That’s a lot of people pumping money into the local economy, Roxbury says. “You really can’t cast a wide enough net around all the businesses that benefit from this cornerstone Tucson event.”

First in line are the other gem and mineral events that have built up around the TGMS. During the pandemic in 2020, a group of collectors banded together to start Mineral City, a group of buildings in an industrial park just west of North Oracle Road between Lester and Plata streets where vendors could display and sell their wares in one place, without collectors having to drive all over town. In four years, it’s expanded from three buildings to 14.

“It’s mostly warehouses that they converted to kind of ‘gem condos,’ if you will, that are either rooms or luxury storage units that they can lock and go,” Roxbury said. “They can show their gems there, they can entertain buyers and other clients at any time by appointment. They’re also in buildings like the old La Fuente restaurant there.”

Beyond Mineral City, there’s also the Miner’s Co-op Rock Show at Sports Park Tucson, which bills itself as the show “made up of the people who dig and mine, or the ones who construct amazing things from rocks” — the “diggers and doers,” as it calls its participants. Roxbury says the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society still has members in their 80s and 90s who worked the mines. “Many of them were miners in their younger years, and some still are,” she said. “It all goes back to the rich mining history in Southern Arizona, some of which is still going on, in a different capacity.”

Then there are the shows held at the hotels and casinos, like the Colors of the Stone show held at Casino Del Sol Resort & Convention Center this year from Saturday, Jan. 27, through Saturday, Feb. 3. (The group also hosts a shorter show there over Labor Day weekend in September.)

“Colors of the Stone is an artisan show, focusing on the unique and unusual,” said Josie Leiva of Bead & Design Shows, a promoter of bead, jewelry and clothing events throughout the west. “You’ll find many smaller booths rather than huge exhibits of the same products. It’s a beautiful, eclectic show. Makers showcasing glass beads and fine jewelry components alongside tradespeople with quality gems and minerals right from the source. And it’s the largest show like this, taking up the entire Casino Del Sol conference center, as well as tents when the weather is good.”

Not for nothin,’ but the serious gem collector crowd includes a lot of wealthy, well-heeled asset collectors. Last year a reporter for The New Yorker witnessed a Dallas rapper surreptitiously returning a $20,000 tanzanite crystal he had “borrowed” to a dealer who wanted to display it at the Miner’s Co-op Rock Show — a plotline that sounds straight out of the gritty 2019 Adam Sandler crime thriller Uncut Gems.

The reporter, Rachel Monroe, also noted that many of the more high-dollar dealers worked out of Tucson hotel rooms rather than the convention floors, setting up their glittering displays on hotel mattresses and holding “secret dealings” behind closed doors.

“It felt seedy and secretive,” Monroe wrote — but “not entirely in a bad way.”

Leiva insisted she’s never witnessed such big-bucks rock exchanges at the Casino Del Sol Resort Tower. “There is not that much selling in the rooms that happens at Colors of the Stone,” she said. “I think that the show space is comfortable enough, it’s not needed to take the sell elsewhere. But I do know that the hotel is usually booked out completely. And I know lots of big sales do end up in the wonderful steakhouse at the casino.”

Next for the Tucson gem and mineral crowd is expanding the rock shows beyond the winter season.

“We’re trying to build out more resources for gem enthusiasts, and not just for the winter showcase period but year-round,” said Roxbury, who notes that the TCC is hosting six new shows this year, in addition to the TGMS. “With all of the dealers and vendors who have set up full-time, ongoing businesses here in the Mineral City district and other places, we’d like to keep things going beyond that four-week period.

“We had one collector call this ‘the Christmas of gem and mineral shows,’ and I thought that was kind of a fun, colorful analogy,” she added. “But we’d like to keep that Christmas going all year long.”