Sorry, I did not mean to offend, I only hoped to make people aware of information that is NOT available on-line, or at least not easily. On the trip we went on I researched long and hard where to go. The goal of my trip was for the most part to rockhound and have the adventure of finding stuff to some extent on my own. I’d heard about the Polka-Dot mine and found the website
http://www.wcmining.com/ However, if you go to that site it says: ‘Due to dramatic changes in West Coast Mining activity, it is necessary for us to change some of the format and content of our website.’ When I read that (and there was no more information on the site, not a link to ANYTHING else) I was worried that something might have happened to the owner, or there had been some ‘dramatic’ problem. So I was reluctant to call the number for fear of opening up some serious problem or invading someone’s privacy. This is why we did not know what day the mine would be open, and therefore did not plan our trip to coincide – It’s impossible to find out without calling! I kind of assumed from the website that the whole operation was shutdown.
However, when we were at Glass Butte we ran into some people who knew more about the mine/owners and made it sound like there was not a problem. They said since we were going to be near Madras anyhow, we should attempt to check it out. That’s when we called the number (only when we were in the area) and got the information about when the site was open. Maybe $3/lb is a great price for PolkaDot Agate, I don’t know, but I’ve never really seen any PolkaDot agate that impressed me that much, but again…I’m not a big time dealer. Part of my post was for information so that people know what the charge is. If that’s a great deal then awesome.
For me 10-20 lbs would have been enough for the next 20 years for the cabs I make, set in sterling and sell at local craft fares. The guy opening the mine was certainly willing to bend over backwards for us to open the mine (and I appreciate that, he was super nice), but (as I said in my post) we ARE NOT some giant dealer looking to purchase a pallet’s worth of stuff, so I knew it would not be worth his time (and I completely understand the cost of machinery, etc. that which is why I did not pursue in the end going to the mine).
>The fellow that was coming up there to accommodate you on his day off would have probably been happy if you dropped a C.note or two which isn't unheard of when you are buying quality material.<
Exactly why we didn’t want to bother him on his day off. It would have been a waste of time for him. I did not know anything about the purple sage and I’ve certainly seen some purple sage here on the forum that is nice and I’d love to get a hold of. Is this the mine for purple sage also? If not, it is it any different in going to a rock shop and purchasing from a bin full of material? I guess I was looking for more of a ‘collect on your own’ experience. Maybe for many things that’s just impossible anymore…I guess everything has become highly commercialized and controlled. Sigh…
>they do the work for you, you have two areas to pore over at your hearts content .They supply the tools and buckets and will give you a ride up the hill out of the pit if you feel you can't hike it with your load of agate. However if you are into self abuse you can beat on the exposed face in the pit until the cows come home and hope something larger than a walnut pops off the very hard and resilient surface<
I did not know that this was a particularly difficult agate to collect. My mistake. I guess it’s just not something you can expect to ‘rockhound’ for. The day before we’d been at the Richardson’s ranch and spent the day collecting thundereggs, and the forms of jasper and agate available there. While it was certainly difficult to collect large pieces of perfect material from the ‘Rainbow’ and ‘Sunset’ agate areas, there was a lot of material lying here and there that did not require too much effort and was still nice. The price there was $1/lb., and perhaps we were just making an unfair comparison with the polka dot rough.
>I did not see any other of the posts mention that the Blue mountain was being "pushed".<
Yup no one else was on the phone call. Again, the guy from the mine was super nice and super friendly, and perhaps ‘Blue mountain jasper’ at $25/lb is a steal. He was probably trying to help us out, but we weren’t really looking for picture jasper. Again we generally are making cabs for jewelry and our experience has often been that to get a good cab with a picture in it the cab ends up being too large for most women to be interested in wearing. No one we are making stuff for here on the east coast is going to care about the fact that this jasper or that is rare because the mine’s been closed. They only care if it looks good when they see it. Heck, most of them don’t even know what jasper is!
> I hope you enjoyed your visit here in beautiful OREGON! PS. Google Blue mountain jasper.<
We did indeed. Oregon was fantastic and the people we met were generally very friendly. When we’ve got a bit more of the rough we collected cut apart I’ll post some photos and more details about our trip. I’m certainly sorry for offending, certainly not my intent. When we were out there I did indeed look at images of the Blue Mountain jasper on my cell phone. It is certainly nice, but to me it looked a lot like imperial jasper I had already at home, and we’d just picked up a fair bit of picture jasper at a half-closed down rock shop we came across in our travels closer to Boise.
