04/30/2026
Seems some feel this post was a slight to other shops, it was not and is not meant to be.
We are not located on a hiway, not in a town or even in a busy area. We are half hour off of hiway 101 in a village, one of the smallest in the county. Because people are looking for the crack your own experience and such, we are trying to save them an out of the way trip if they are looking only for that and they see via google or whatnot along standing rock shop such as ours. In fact when people ask we send them to the other places for such things.
Nothing more sinister than that. In fact we said it’s great for them they’re doing so well. But we are a different kind of shop and have been going on close to 40 years now
We recently had a customer come by the shop looking to "crack their own geode" and they were quite confused when we they looked around and saw some opened up we replied we do not do that service as we try to limit the amount of minerals and rocks that we carry that come from outside of not just the USA but outside of the PNW. We will cut open Thunder Eggs and such which sometimes can be like geodes with hollow spots.
There's a little shop up north which is getting great traction by offering that service, which is great for them and that might be part of their business model and all, but a majority of the material we have available is stuff that was mined by either our own family or by close friends of the family. Typically the types of geodes that are featured in those "crack your own" are imported from Morocco or Mexico, and there is nothing wrong with that, they are very pretty and have great sparkle. Heck we do have some of the already opened ones for sale just to have some for people who are looking for those, but it's not our bread and butter. We do have things like the Oregon State Rock, the Thunder Egg, which most of the time is not hollow, but often solid with striking patterns of agate, jasper or sometimes even opal. If you tried using the chain breaker to open one of these theres a good chance you'd break the opener....
So with that, we'd like to remind everyone that although we do have some crystal geodes and such, we are not a crystal shop and we are more of a lapidary shop where one comes to get stuff for making their own jewellery and the like. Yes, we do have some jewellery and all since we have a Sunstone mine and all. But you will not find lots of fossils, spheres made from material not sourced from the greater PNW, and those that we do have the gentleman who makes them lives 15minutes away.
We appreciate all of our regulars and new comers, but just want to make sure that ya'll understand what our main bread and butter is!
