Got crystals? Gemmining could be your full- time job
MODERN- DAY PROSPECTORS MAKE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS SELLING PRECIOUS STONES THEY DUG UP THEMSELVES
Moonstones in Montana, amethyst and emeralds in North Carolina, garnet and quartz in upstate New York. At pay- todig mines around the United States, visitors can paw through piles of mine tailings to uncover crystals and gemstones on “finders, keepers” terms for as little as $ 10 a day.
At Herkimer Diamond Mines in central New York, a $ 14 admission price includes a day of prospecting and the rental of a rock hammer. ( Children under 4 mine for free.)
In a typical year, one- fifth of themine’s customers are international tourists, so when the coronavirus halted travel and delayed the start of this year’s April- to- November digging season, mine proprietor Renee Scialdo Shevat worried about what the loss in revenue may do to the 40- year- old family business.
By late summer, she was more concerned with how to limit the crowds. Diggers of all ages and degrees of seriousness had begun arriving in droves. “These days, every day is like a Saturday,” Shevat said in early September.
NEWLIFE
Even before the pandemic sent people searching for road trip destinations and outdoor adventure, interest in prospecting and rockhounding ( or “fossicking,” as it is called in Britain and Australia) was already ticking upward. That has prompted some mines that had long been closed, like the Ruggles Mine in Grafton, New Hampshire, toward new life.
From 1963 to 2016, Ruggles hosted tourists and hobbyists seeking mica, aquamarine, rose quartz and other treasures in its underground chutes and caverns. ( It closed in 2016 when its owner, then 90, retired.) Late last year, New York City developers snatched it up with plans to reopen it as a tourist attraction, with major upgrades.
Mine owners aren’t the only ones with bright prospects. Some entrepreneurs are finding ways to carve out new careers in gemstones, too.
For example, after having their jobs and schooling upended by the pandemic in the spring, Frank and Kyndall Stallings, 22 and 27, of Charleston, Missouri, pivoted to digging for crystals.
“It all started in February, when Frank took me to the diamond mine in Arkansas for Valentine’s Day,” Kyndall Stallings said of the couple’s visit to a $ 10- a- day public mine called Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro.
While they didn’t bring home a diamond, they did find a tiny piece of quartz. The experience was a thrill of lifechanging proportions. By mid-March, Frank Stallings’ work as a financial adviser had slowed significantly, Kyndall Stallings’ classes for a bachelor’s degree in horticulture had gone remote, and a job she had recently been offered — data entry at a hospital — never started.
With their newfound time, the Stallingses were mining nearly every day.
Bymid- April, the couple had sold everything they owned and hit the road to work as freelance crystal miners.
“Fifty dollars a day to dig, and if you dig really hard you find $ 2,000, $ 3,000, $ 5,000 worth of crystals,” Frank Stallings said, referring to Ron Coleman Mining, a crystal mine in Arkansas where the couple recently unearthed a “once in a lifetime” 15- pound clear quartz point, which they later sold for $ 1,500.
While $ 5,000 days are extremely rare, the Stallingses do earn a living selling specimens out of the back of their Toyota RAV4 and on eBay.
MINER AMBITIONS
A dedicated rockhound may, in theory, make up to $ 10,000 a month A mineral or crystal may fetch several times the price of one imported from a commercial mine abroad. Sellers can sometimes charge even more if they capture their finds on video ( and hype them on social media).
One of the kingpins of this business model is Bryan Major, aka the Crystal Collector, a shaggy- haired prospector who posted his first crystal- digging video to YouTube nine years ago.
Video after video show him brandishing an amethyst cluster the size of his torso or an aquamarine crystal the length of his forearm - not only courting potential buyers, but also luring rockhounding newcomers with what they could achieve.
To make a career of digging crystals and gemstones, a nomadic life isn’t mandatory: Patrick and Samantha Krug, 32 and 30, go rockhounding multiple times a week a stone’s throw from their own backyard in Fonda, New York.
“There’s nothing like birthing a crystal that has been in the dark for 500 million years, being the first one to bring it into the light, not knowing what you have until you get it out and clean,” Patrick Krug said. He and his wife fell in love with digging Herkimer diamonds while in college at SUNY Cobleskill. ( The couple goes by “Him & Herk” on Instagram.)
The clearer and cleaner edged they are, the more value Herkimer diamonds have.
Despite the Herkimer diamond’s cachet, the Krugs haven’t fully cashed in. They are keeping their operation small and holding onto most of what they find. “We’re trying to collect every formation Herkimers make,” Patrick Krug said. “If it speaks to us, we’re going to keep it.”