Buy a full case and the price per unit drops automaticallyRequest a sample
AccountCart0
All ContainersBottlesJarsCaps & ClosuresPumps & SprayersTubs & PailsJugsDroppersTinsTubesAccessories
Industries
Learn
Getting started

Turning a find into something you can sell

Updated

On this page5

Material becomes salable through documentation and preparation, not through being found.

What a buyer is buying

A specimen, a name, a locality, a condition and a history.

Three of those five are paper. Which is why a well-documented ordinary specimen frequently outsells an undocumented good one.

The gap between a rock and a specimen

A rock is material with no data, no preparation and no housing.

A specimen has been cleaned, trimmed where appropriate, identified with a stated basis, catalogd, numbered, labeled, photographed and housed in something inert.

That list is the value added, and it is entirely within your control.

The work in between

Clean to the least aggressive standard that works. Trim only where it improves the specimen.

Identify honestly, with the basis recorded.

Write the locality to the precision you actually know.

Photograph properly, with a scale, on a plain background, in consistent light. Online, the photograph is the specimen.

House it in an inert box with a label that will outlive you.

The one that is specific to this craft: can you sell it at all?

Material collected under the BLM personal-use allowance was collected for noncommercial purposes. Selling it requires a permit or a claim.

Material from private land depends on what the owner agreed.

Vertebrate fossils from federal land remain federal property and are not yours to sell under any circumstances.

Settle that before listing anything, because it is a question about the collecting rather than the selling, and the collecting already happened.

References

No published source. This page is written from practice rather than from published guidance. No extension service or agency publishes on this question for minerals, so nothing here is cited, and it should be weighed as experience and not as a standard.
Written from the federal land-management rules, the conservation literature and the agency guidance named on each page. Collecting rules differ by agency, by unit and sometimes by parcel, and the land manager for the ground you are standing on is the authority on it, not this page.