African Art Village remains a destination for antique trade beads. The other main venue for this material, Gem and Lapidary Wholesalers show at Grant Inn (formerly Rodeway Inn on Grant) closed in 2011. The vendors / general material you will see in this link from the closing year mostly have relocated into one of the other G&LW venues, the Gem Mall. So this array of ethnic dealers can be found in one of the tents there now, as of Feb. of this year. The concentration of African trade beads at Tucson is located at these two venues - African Village and Grant Inn. There are of course other dealers at other shows who carry them.

The same promoters that run the show at Howard Johnson are now the promoters at the Grant Inn location, which is promising from what I have heard. A few vendors from the G&LW show stayed at this location, and others confirmed for this venue for 2013 are Danny Lopacki and Tiger Tiger. Hoping Danny or Matt can tell us more.

Floor is about to complete a book on the whole Tucson show experience, we all look forward to this!

BeadCollector.net users have met for dinners on the opening days of the Tucson shows since 2006. This year, we had 20 at Mariscos, a fine, beady time was had by all!

Some bead collecting forumites have attended the shows for 30+ years. FinFan is a local Tucsonian and bcn forumite. You'd think there'd be more!