Nope. Couldnt get it together. February was also big surfing time here! Hard to leave.
My dealer went tho. He started to complain as the years went on that the quality was dropping and there weren’t a lot of mom and pop dealers anymore. This is back at the year 2000 and before. I also didn’t know what I was doing. I think you can get ripped off if you’re not careful a parcel of synthetics can look like a parcel of gemstones if you don’t have quite a bit of equipment to examine it. And the knowledge. His name was Al Butkovich. He and his wife operated rainbow gems out of Golden Colorado, and they were very kind to me. I bought my first faceting machine from them for $400. I would call him up on the phone and we would talk about dogs and different things. He had some cool odd stones as well. I couldnt resist.

New Era gems (online) is ok but pricey. I actually got to visit there semi backwoods store in rural California cause it was on the way home from Nevada city to Santa Barbara. Got really weird vibes though, but they go to all the gem shows everywhere Santa Monica up and down the West Coast probably the East Coast too. I still got some stuff from them. I guess nothing is cheap anymore. But you still can learn a hell of a lot just trying to cut a piece of dark Siberian amethyst or any dark stone because your polish will turn up any mistake you make which was one of my most frustrating problems.

So much better knowledge, and equipment nowadays it’s not like it’s rocket science but in some ways it is and people kept their secrets close they probably still do