Please use one of the following emails:
Usually I mail items within a day of receiving payment; however, due to my travel schedule, I will sometimes be unable to mail anything for an extended period. I am the least available from mid-April through August when I might be away from my shop for months at a time. I am essentially closed for the summer and up and running September to March, with a few absences. I will nearly always have internet access. If you want to place an order, contact me by email and I’ll let you know about my schedule. I will reserve items until I can get them packed and ready to mail. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Send an email with any questions. If you want to talk by phone, email your phone number and I’ll call you. I don’t want to put a phone number here because the internet bots will find it and ring my phone off the hook with scams and other annoyances.
To place an order let me know what you want by email. I can send you a PayPal invoice. I accept most credit cards through PayPal even if you do not have a PayPal account by emailing a PayPal invoice. It will include easy to follow instructions. When using PayPal this way, you do not even have to let me know your credit card number.
Postage at actual cost. Returns permitted within seven days of your receipt for any reason. No return after seven days for any reason without prior permission. No returns on books.
No international deliveries unless customer purchases insurance and assumes full risk of loss. This is due to repeated delivery issues, especially in Europe. I have never had a shipment come up lost other than one to Japan twenty years ago that was delivered to the wrong address. I have had FedEx spread packages all over the place and greatly delay delivery which causes me more stress than I need. Three boxes I sent at one time to the same customer in Switzerland were in three different countries for a while. Another time I shipped a package to Germany that was returned to me because the customer had the wrong address on PayPal. I lost $70 in postage on that one. I have sent hundreds of packages overseas and all customers other than the one in Japan and one in Germany with the wrong address received them. My doctor wants me to limit my stress. I am 75.
Some of the larger logs and slices are too large to ship overseas.
Colorado purchasers the sales tax for your location, including state, county, city, and any special districts (dumb new law).
I accept payments through PayPal or you may send a personal check. Reserve any specimen by email and be sure to include specimen numbers. Always feel free email with any questions. See below for an explanation of some of the terms I use regarding fossil wood.
In the event that more than one customer orders the same specimen, the order which I receive first by email, phone, or mail will prevail.
Overseas and Canadian recipients responsible for all applicable permits, licenses, taxes, tariffs, and duties. Full return in original condition for any reason for 15 days from receipt. Return shipping costs cannot be refunded. Orders outside the United States of America limited to less than $2500 US per package (due to an export license I do not have) and shipped by United States Postal Service ONLY (Due to recent problems with FedEx) unless other arrangements have been made.
DEFINITIONS:
STUMP: When I refer to a piece of petrified wood as a stump, I am doing so informally and colloquially. This will be a specimen that is a short section of a branch or a small tree with the appearance of a stump, sometimes known as a bole section. A stump will be a freestanding piece. As opposed to slices, stumps retain some of the flavor of the outside of the fossil.
LOG END/BRANCH END: A log end or branch end is a piece with one end which has been cut and polished and the other end being as found.
FACE: A “face” is the polished section.
SPECIMEN ROUND: A “specimen round” is a piece which has been cut and polished, generally across the transverse aspect, and has a perimeter that is the natural rock as found; the face that is polished reveals color and detail, although the rock as found was not a complete trunk or branch, sometimes having broken and tumbled millennia ago.
FULL ROUND: A “full round’ will be a specimen cut across the transverse aspect [cross-section] that seems to pretty much encompass a complete set of annual rings, or if a cast, will have most of the full circumference.
FULL ROUND/SPECIMEN ROUND: This is a piece that I was taught as a novice Utah wood collector to be a full round. It has the exterior characteristics of a full round piece of wood, but the interior structures reveal it to be a piece of a larger tree. I personally do not discriminate against this type of full round, but since some do, I sometimes use this term as a compromise.
No glue/No filler: It means what is says, however I’ll add a proviso: the piece has no glue or filler of which I am aware, so if there is some glue, it’s imperceptible.
MUSEUM SPECIMEN/MUSEUM QUALITY: Virtually everything here could be in a museum; when I use the term “museum specimen,” I mean a very special piece. “Museum quality” refers to a specimen that has everything one would expect in a museum specimen but it is not as large as what you would see in most museums.
For the past thirty years plus, I have been accumulating specimens for my collection and to photograph for my books, picking up duplicates of special specimens to sell or trade. Along the way, I was privileged to purchase some of the finest private collections in existence. Having spent months traveling thousands of miles to find these beauties, I am now offering some of the world’s best specimens to museums and private collectors. Please give them a good home.
FJD – If a specimen number begins with “FJD”, as in FJD OR 999, it is especially perfect and came from my personal collection (or is of that same high quality). My number one priority in fossil wood collecting is beauty, closely followed by perfection. Specimens with “FJD” will have either no glues or fillers or very little. I have been a collector all my life and I’m into my 8th decade on this planet. In my opinion, the finest collection specimens are extremely rare. Specimens with glue and cracks and other problems are common. I do not discriminate by size, so some of my specimens are quite small. I tend to favor limb sections over slices as they tell a better story and have more character. Pieces of “FJD” quality are in the top tiny percentage of all of the petrified wood the earth has to offer (most of which is not collector quality). I am in an ongoing process of dramatically reducing the size of my collections, so most of what I add to my website now is top grade to my way of seeing things.