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Greetings from Arizona!

Posted by Terry Diede on

Welcome to our blog! We hope to use this space to give you a little peek of life behind the scenes at DD Rocks. Finding, processing and selling the inventory you see here is a full-time, year round job and as fellow rockhounds, we thought you may be interested in the sometimes long and exciting journey the rocks you see have taken to get here.

This month, we're highlighting the new materials and special finds from our exploration of the myriad of rocks, gems, and minerals we have been chasing this month at the Arizona rock and gem shows.

Quartzsite Gem and Mineral Show

There are several exciting new agates we have acquired here:

The hottest new material on the market seems to be Purple Passion, a very intense purple fortification agate with pastel layers from Mexico.

New agate from Morocco is widely varied and offers everything from tight fortifications to delicate plumes. The Bau Hamsa has very strong patterns and bold colors resembling the Condor agates of Argentina, while other pieces consisted of plumes in peach and purple shades.

Royal Flamingo was something we tried to get last year but we were only able to get one slab.  This year the miners brought to market a few hundred pounds and we were able to acquire several very large nice pieces.  This agate varies between graceful, wavy lines and spiky needles in golden colors.

From the Mexican vendors we were able to secure some very nice Parrot Wing, Fireworks Obsidian and an agate they call “Ghost Agate” which has very subtle patterns in a light purple/blue agate.

Ken wheeling and dealing

The Australians brought new supplies of Dendritic Opal so watch for high-quality, white opalite loaded with dendrites and black agate eyes, as well as green and gold Dendritic Opalite.  They also had a great supply of Binthalya Opal, Mozambique, and Botswana agates to choose from.

We were able to pick up some very limited and exceptional collection pieces this year including Pietersite, Wingate Pass Plume, Bullion Mountain Plume, Variquoise, Blue Biggs, Morrisonite, Willow Creek, Keegan Ranch, Bruneau, and Deschutes jaspers, as well as some high quality Larimar.

After many days of “barrel diving” my favorite acquisition for the season would have to be Magnetite Jade.  The metallic silver splashes on the dark green background takes a high polish and will make striking jewelry.

Terry getting down and dirty in the rock pile

This new material will be added to the store weekly.  Some items are ready now and will be listed starting this week, others have to be broken down and processed once we are back in Montana, so they won’t be available until later this spring.  It was a fantastic rock-picking season and we look forward to providing a great variety of high quality new and exciting materials.


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