The Definition of “Old Stock” – Mexican Crazy Lace Edition

I have a problem.

I’m getting on in years. I know that somebody – no idea who – will own my dad’s really great rocks in less than twenty years. I have maybe that much time to decide what to do with the rocks. That’s really why I started KinesavaROCKS.com – to do something worthwhile with my dad’s rocks.

A lot of people have had this problem. When my dad was in his prime – 60 or 70 years ago – he and his friends would take a trip out into the desert and come back with the best rocks the desert had to offer. There were a lot of great rocks to find back then.

I’ve thought a lot about why they worked so hard to drag these rocks home. I’ve decided that one reason is that my dad and his friends were children of the Great Depression. He grew up as one of five brothers in a high mountain coal mining camp – a company town named after the mine owners. He knew what it was to be hungry and only have worn out shoes to wear. My mother told me stories about men with guns around government buildings during union strikes. I think that, as a young man, my dad realized one day that it was possible to drive out into the desert and just pick up something valuable and bring it home again. That scratched an itch in him that was planted and nurtured from the moment he was born. Whatever caused it, he sure collected a lot of rocks!

Occasionally, Ebay features a few dozen ads of small rocks of a specific type polished into something like beads. As I write this, there are a dozen or so ads for Utah agatized barite there now. The beads are good agate but … well … they’re just beads. I’ve seen the same thing with Utah Tempskya Fern fossils – worked into beads for sale on Ebay. My theory is that someone else like me inherited a pile of “old stock” rocks. Because the heir didn’t really want them, a middleman bought the whole pile and shipped them off to be worked into beads in some third world factory.

That’s not going to happen to my dad’s rocks – at least not right away. I write letters to people who buy a few of my dad’s rocks and I tell them that the reason I’m doing this is to get the rocks into the hands of people who will really appreciate them. And then I tell them about my dad.

That works well for Utah agatized barites and petrified wood and I’m not going to exhaust my inventory very soon. But it doesn’t work for my dad’s “permanent” collection. Those are rocks that my dad kept apart because they were special in some way. I’ve got a great little chunk of “Fordite” and a piece of titanium refined by an old, obsolete method. My dad didn't find those on the desert. But they will probably be owned by the same person who gets what’s left in my dad’s rocks in a few more years. Some of these rocks are just too great to give up very easily. An example that falls into that category is this slab of Mexican Crazy Lace agate.

Mexican Crazy Lace agate has been mined in Chihuahua, Mexico since at least the 1950’s so it’s one of the most well known and popular rocks in the whole rockhound world. But it’s not as popular as it once was for a very common reason. It’s just been mined out now. The good stuff has been gone for years. It’s easy to find seconds and little chunks on the web. It’s also easy to find disappointed buyers posting in rock forums. Amazon sells it too! They’re small chunks that you won’t actually see until after you buy them. The example pictures tell me that the old mines are worked out now. The rocks at Amazon go for $34 a pound. Check it out. There’s a reason Jeff Bezos is so rich.

I acquired this slab from a friend who put a partial polish (tool marks are still visible) on one side so the rock shows up more clearly. I won’t do anything with it so I decided that someone with lapidary equipment who can make something beautiful from the rock should have it. (I may repeat this blog with a different rock sometime in the future.)

I sell my dad’s barites and petrified wood at a fraction of what they’re worth for a couple of reasons. I don’t do any marketing. When I had a store at Etsy, they did the marketing and a lot more people “found” my store. But Etsy was taken over by Vulture Capitalists and it’s not a nice place anymore. The first thing the new owners did was give themselves multi-million dollar raises. The only goal they seem to have in life is to be as rich as Jeff Bezos. I decided I would rather have fewer sales and enjoy doing it more. People will naturally assume that my dad’s rocks are pretty much like others (even though they’re better).

I often have no idea what the rocks are really worth. But asking people to pay for a rock is an easy way to do a rough screen on who is really interested in having the rocks and who isn’t. Anybody will take something free. Paying actual money for something – even if it’s a screeching bargain – screens out the people who are not that interested. That’s also part of the reason that I always charge for shipping. I don’t want people to ever think that my dad’s rocks aren’t worth anything – which they will do. As I noted above, they’re the best rocks the desert had to offer half a century ago. My dad never brought home any ‘leaverite’. They’re alllllllll genuine “old stock”.

The person who gets this rock won’t be a grandparent looking for something nice for a birthday present. (A favorite type of customer. They’re so happy when they see what they got in the mail.) The person who gets this one will be a discerning and knowledgeable rockhound with an eye for quality and a plan. So for this one, I’m going to charge what I think it’s really worth to the customer who will buy it.

Why is this one worth what I’m asking?

• It’s solid. One web site I found in my research noted that today’s mining methods focus on volume. That means heavy mining equipment and often dynamite. They didn’t do that with this rock.

• The patterns and colors are magnificent. That’s what pictures are for.

• It’s Old Stock Mexican Crazy Lace. That’s really all you have to know

Check out the listing!