Gold & the Hard Rock Summit Show
The Hard Rock Summit Show has become the top fall mineral show in Denver around which other shows have clustered. It features top mineral dealers that are familiar to many. One of the partners running the Hard Rock Show is Christoph Keilman whom I’ve known for years. His father started the Munich Show and Christoph has been running that show for years. He is a skilled showman who has brought some of Munich’s better ideas to Denver. As for special exhibits, the Hard Rock Summit Show spares no expense. Each year they choose one high-value special exhibit that is the centerpiece. In 2021, the central theme exhibit was Colorado rhodochrosite in a display named Rhodochrosite Royalty. It held three of the most valuable and eye-appealing rhodochrosite specimens. All three specimens had been mined in Colorado, a tting tribute to that state’s mineral heritage. e specimens now reside in museums that loaned them for the Hard Rock Summit Show. For 2022, the Hard Rock Summit team chose a stellar theme, gold. eir special exhibit held three of the world’s rarest and nest gold specimens. is exhibit ranks in value above anything I’ve seen outside a museum. Brought together were Gold Horn, e Dragon and e Crystal, a huge single gold crystal, a 17-ounce (216 gr.) octahedron, the largest in the world. To highlight gold in an entirely dierent way, they also featured the recovered gold and artifact treasures, worth millions, from two sunken ships. I am familiar with two of the gold specimens displayed at the Hard Rock Summit - Gold Horn and e Dragon. I have more than a casual association with the Gold Horn as I have photographed it, handled it and even carried it around in public! I have not had the pleasure of handling e Dragon, but I have photographed it and I was lucky enough to be allowed underground and visited e Dragon’s lair to take photos of the search that found it.
As remarkable as the specimen is for its crystallization and shape, what I find interesting is it was hidden in a pocket of gold in solid quartz and bypassed by early mining. It was only discovered by using a metal detector.”
THE GOLD HORN
A 4.7-inch bundle of wire crystals that curve to look like an animal’s horn, Gold Horn has a gentle curl at its termination and is over an inch wide at its base. Atomic studies at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico were reported by Ohio State Professor John Rakovan, a fellow rock hound. Gold Horn is a series of large crystals that extend as wires in a bundle. is diers from similar silver wires that are composed of a myriad of tiny crystals. e Gold Horn was mined nearly 150 years ago in the Ground Hog Mine in Red Cli, Colorado near Telluride. It so happens I have a nice gold tie bar of Ground Hog gold my son Bill gave me for my 90th birthday. My tie bar gold was collected in the Ground Hog Mine by a miner who worked there many years ago. e Gold Horn is now part of the A.C. Burrage gold collection donated to the Harvard Mineral Museum and has been displayed at Tucson.
THE DRAGON
e Dragon, which looks like the prole of a dragon, is well-named. Unlike Gold Horn that was found a long time ago, e Dragon is a relatively recent nd mined in the Colorado Quartz Mine near Mariposa, California. As remarkable as the specimen is for its crystallization and shape, what I nd interesting is it was hidden in a pocket of gold in solid quartz and bypassed by early mining. It was only discovered by using a metal detector. It was for that reason I asked for permission to go underground into the Dragon’s lair. I wanted to document the use of metal detectors to search for gold pockets in solid mine tunnel walls. Aer all, miners in the old days easily missed small pockets of riches using their bulk method of mining.
SUNKEN GOLD
Along with the gold specimens were gold and artifacts from two treasure ships that sank carrying gold. Exhibited was gold jewelry and even a pair of original Levis made in San Francisco by Levi Strauss in the 1850s.
For 2022 the Hard Rock Summit team chose a stellar theme, gold. Their special exhibit held three of the world’s rarest and finest gold specimens. This exhibit ranks in value above anything I’ve seen outside a museum. Brought together were Gold Horn, The Dragon and The Crystal, a huge single gold crystal, a 17-ounce (216 gr.) octahedron, the largest in the world.”
e richest nd, worth millions, was from the SS Central America which sank o the coast of South Carolina in 1857. I met some of the fellows who recovered the gold. e SS Central America gold horde was in every form – coins, bars, personal quantities of nuggets and crystal owned by the over 300 passengers on the ship. One gold bar found weighed 80 pounds, the largest known gold bar. My son Bill arranged for me to li a 40-pound gold bar so I can only imagine what an 80-pound bar feels like. I nd the hundreds of $50 gold coins from the ship very interesting. ey are octagonal and weigh two and a half ounces as gold was $20 an ounce back then. I did not even know there were $50 gold coins until the 1970s. at’s when I met a coin collector who allowed me to photograph his coin collection. When he laid out the coins, one of them was an octagonal coin marked y dollars. I asked its true value at that time and was told $10,000. Imagine nding several hundred such coins in the Central America horde! e Hard Rock Summit Show is o to a rousing start with two valuable world-class exhibit themes under its belt and top-notch dealers in a facility designed for such events. I can hardly wait for 2023 when it is joined by the Denver Club Show and the AGTA Wholesale Show. Plan on it!
Bob Jones holds the Carnegie Mineralogical Award, is a member of the Rockhound Hall of Fame and has been writing for Rock & Gem since its inception.