agate

Be sure to visit us for our upcoming Garage Sale August 30-31, 2019 and scoop up some amazing bargains by the pound. We are overrun with donated material from local rockhounds, and we are running out of storage space. This material is priced to sell! The rough lapidary material and yard rocks are at especially attractive prices. We’re hoping to declutter the storage area and reduce the inventory we’ve accumulated not just this summer, but over the years. At a similar event for Memorial Day earlier this year, many of you suggested we should do another one – so here it is! This time we’ve got some interesting material we picked up from multiple sources. First and foremost, we’ve got excess zeolites from the late Rudy Tschernich, our former curator and author of “Zeolites of the World.” The museum hosts some of the finest zeolite specimens anywhere on display in the Northwest Gallery, but if you knew Rudy, you can imagine we have tons more from some of the best zeolite localities known, including Robertson Pit in Washington, the Goble area in northwest Oregon, countless basalt quarries in western Oregon, and even a few from India and Europe. Rudy’s definitive book is available for free download as a PDF. By the time he retired, Rudy donated over 13,000 zeolites to the museum, and we probably have the finest collection anywhere. There are countless duplicates, however, so we’ve made about 100 available for sale this year. In addition, super-volunteer Linda Harvey journeyed north to tackle famed mineral collector Bob Jackson’s storage area, where she picked up pounds of Spruce Ridge material. Bob’s claim up near Snoqualmie Pass in Washington has yielded amazing clusters of nicely terminated quartz crystals, with large pyrite crystals interspersed. Some of the clusters offered for sale will need to be cleaned; museum staff manning the garage sale can provide you with tips on the right kitchen chemicals to use. On top of all that, we have taken in a few hundred pounds of material collected from the Nehalem River. This material includes a fine red jasper and some interesting agate. Some drop by, bring a bucket, and go home with some interesting pieces. You’ll be supporting the museum and snagging some great collectibles.