OREgon ROCKhounds ONline
This is the home page of Oregon Rockhounds Online. Ore-Rock-On was founded by Tim Fisher (me) on Sunday, June 4, 1995, whilst putting off lots of yardwork which I had to do. The organization's membership immediately swelled to four to include my wife, Tonya, and my kids, Tad and Lauren. They were totally enthusiastic about joining, and besides, they didn't have a choice!
Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB)'s TV show Oregon Field Guide has done a story on thunderegg hunting that aired on October 31st, 2013! We were featured digging thundereggs at the McDonald Ranch in Ashwood, OR, cutting and polishing the egg, and many of our specimens were shown. There's lots of great info and footage of thunderegg enthusiasts at Richardson's Ranch in Madras OR, one of the premier thunderegg digging locations anywhere. The episode is available here!
I do occasionally buy lapidary equipment and rock, supplies, slabs, etc. I get emails from folks at least once a month about buying stuff, especially estates. I almost never bite, but I wil at least help you if you can tell me the following. If it sounds like I am being tough, I'm really helping you from wasting your time and energy. My advice to you is email me IF:
1) You are within a few hours of Potland OR. I won't drive across the northwest to look at a collection.
2) The equipment is useable or can be reasonably refurbished, not trashed, squashed, or left out to rust. I generally am looking to buy rock saws and cabochon units (not grinders, those are a dime a dozen). I will consider tumblers, flat laps, sanders, polishers, etc.
3) The rock is of very good to exceptional quality. If it looks like driveway or yard rock, it probably is. Massive piles of thundereggs, petrified wood, obsidian, jasper, agate, etc. are never all of decent quality. I can spot what's good stuff and rock wall material in pics if you send some decent ones. If you aren't sure what you have, find out if there's a local rock club that is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corp. If you donate the rock to them, you can take a tax write-off for whatever they value the rock at. That's the best option for the majority of people with large collections of self-collected rock.
4) If you are unsure of what you have send pics or a detailed descrption or I probably won't answer. If you're looking to offload everything to one person I'm probably not your guy. I have almost never seen one person buy an entire collection and all the equipment.
5) I cannot pay anywhere near retail prices for equipment or rock. Unless it's something really special I will resell it and I need to make something on it. Don't look at what new equipment opr rock is priced at or what the Ebay or Craigslist sellers are asking. Typically well under fifty cents a pound is what you can expect for a large collection of rock. Cut the full retail price of equipment by 75% and you're close to what you can reasonably expect to get for it depending on its condition. Keep in mind that just as with new cars, the value of brand new equipment drops 1/4 - 1/3 of the price you paid as soon as you cut the check.
If you made it through all of that then please feel free to CONTACT ME HERE
I now do restoration of used lapidary equipment by popular demand. Click on the link below.
Lapidary Equipment Restoration Services
For those of you who are looking for something specific in my for sale pages, such as when I list refurbished equipment, I might have a solution for you. You may want to try this: https://www.changedetection.com, I think all you do is sign up and enter the address of the page, for example if you are looking for equipment enter http://orerockon.com/equipment_for_sale.html, and they should send you an email when I add something. BUT, it probably will send you a notice when I change one letter of one sentence on the page, so you might get annoyed by it at some point. It's a great way to track when I list new polished items, since I typically don't change anything until something sells and/or I add items, and equipment, which I never change unless I add new pieces or change the status to "sold" as they sell.
Copyright © 1997 - 2023