BETHEL — For a mere $2, some lucky person attending this weekend’s two-day Western Maine Gem, Mineral and Jewelry Show will take home a piece of Maine history.

Two dollars covers the admission fee for the 48th annual show, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday
at Telstar High School.

“This small admission fee gets you through the door to see the wonderful treasures that the dealers have for you to peruse and purchase,” co-organizer Lin Chapman of Gilead said.

It also qualifies a person for hourly prizes and the grand door prize drawing, which is a ring set with pink tourmaline donated by Jane Perham of Perham’s of West Paris, Chapman said.

“Hopefully, that will be a big draw,” Chapman said Thursday. “Mining at the Dunton Quarry in Newry in the early 1970s produced the largest discovery of gem tourmaline in the world. This stone came from that find.”

On the Fourth of July, Perham’s closed its family-owned business for good after 90 years.

Chapman said the “gem of a show” will feature a wide variety of dealers from Maine and across the nation.

In addition to museum-quality displays and an eye-catching fluorescent mineral booth, there will be gold panning, spinning for minerals, a silent auction and a “cabbing” demonstration on how to turn a rough stone into a polished stone,
Chapman said.

The Oxford County Gem and Mineral Association, which is sponsoring the show, will host guided field trips to the Tamminen Mine in West Paris and the Intergalactic Mine near Deer Hill in Stow. The trips will begin at 11 a.m. on both days.

For more information, contact Hugh Chapman at 836-2987.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com