Quartzite '07

This year marked my shortest trip to Quartzite ever. I left Thursday night and was back at home less than 24 hours later. The fact was that I'd seen just about all of it before. In fact, there seemed to be even less variety this year. I didn't really imagine that there could be much in the way of new fossils, but it was a little depressing none the less. Prices have been gradually climbing too.
In the end, I bought some hematite spheres as per my room-mate's request, a keichasaurus, two pieces of australian jurassic tree fern, a chinese stromatolite sphere, about two dozen discounted gemstones and close to a dozen cleaned animal skulls. As for the skulls, I'd been meaning to pick some up for the last few years, but really only had the cash this year. I was tempted to get a few pretty mineral samples, but decided against it on the grounds of cost, priority and the fact that the vender was rather rude about it. I was also tempted to buy the skull of a large, tusked (lower not upper) mammal from china. I assume that it was some sort of ungulate, but since I couldn't see the teeth, I can't be sure that it wasn't a probosidian. I came pretty close to buying it too. I could tell that a few portions of the skull, particularly the tip of the rostrum and the cheek bones were artificially restored, but over all, it seemed like a good specimen. I even managed to get the guy selling it to seriously consider my offer of $500, a significant decrease from his asking price of $4500. What ruined the deal for me was that he said that he had several such skulls. I typically only buy rarer fossil material if I think that I'm saving it from a private collection and that I'm not promoting further collection. In this case, the dealer could probably restock, thereby defeating my intention of 'saving' the specimen.