Montana Rockhounding

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Montana Rockhounding

Photos and information about Montana's rocks, agates, minerals, crystals, gemstones, and geological structures. NOT all pieces shown in the photos are for sale.

Shop with us today for your next custom designed geology/ranching product, rock, gemstone, or mineral specimen on our website and on Etsy! This page is to exhibit rocks, minerals, gemstones, and geological structures from Montana. All rocks, minerals, and gemstones photos were taken by Montana Rockhounding and are for educational/viewing purposes. Those pieces that are for sale can be pur

chased through my Etsy shop. Some photographed rocks, minerals, and gemstones may be pieces that are not currently owned or have ever been owned by Montana Rockhounding, but are photographs taken by Montana Rockhounding. If you are interested in purchasing a rock, mineral, or gemstone that I have for sale, you can visit my Etsy shop at https://www.montanarockhounding.etsy.com to see if it is still available. Starting in spring 2024, Montana Rockhounding is an Amazon Associate where I may earn from qualifying purchases through associated product links. Montana Rockhounding is also on Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. Check us out today!

04/06/2026

Happy Montana Day (406) everyone! I hope everyone enjoyed their Easter yesterday. I spent the day with my family out collecting Mile High Agate and had a great ham dinner.

Last week, I got an amazing opportunity. Originally, I was supposed to interview for an easy-peasy engineering job with Hadley Aldrich in one of it's 2 Montana offices. However, they cancelled it a couple days prior after already offering the job to someone else before the interviews even began (we all know what type of hire that was). It's probably for the best since the salary offered isn't a livable salary here in Montana on top of the higher costs with them requiring the new hire to buy a new 4x4 vehicle themselves just to complete the job. What a shame. 😮‍💨

Anyways...
Since I had the time already set aside, I decided to do something else. I saw someone was selling rocks in town, so I emptied the savings account (again) and went to look at the rocks for sale. Hidden on a dusty shelf were two pieces of covellite! It cost me almost every dollar I took with me, but I got them along with some neat fish fossils and several very dirty pieces of Butte bornite and rhodochrosite. 😄

The original owner was a long time friend and visitor to Koop's Gem Shop before his death, so I knew there would be something good. I've spent a lifetime trying to find a piece of the ultra rare Golden covellite from Butte that was both affordable and specimen worthy. Luckily, I finally found a piece! Sure, it needs a bit stronger of a clean other than water, and the other piece is just a classic example of higher grade covellite, but for those who don't know, Covellite comes in blue and purple normally, and on rare occasions a red color or even golden color in rarer occasions. It takes some very special environmental conditions and dark depths to get these red and gold colors in Covellite making these colors rare to find around the Earth and even harder to find for sale by other collectors. However, both pieces still make me happy sitting in the family collection now, and no, it will NEVER be for sale. 😁

03/01/2026

A cool video released by YNP with all its 2025 stats including spending costs. It really provides insight into the park's operations.

I haven't been in it since 2009, so I imagine a lot has changed. It was pretty crowded and full of idiots who didn't understand the concept of giving wild animals space back then. I hear it's exceptionally worse now. I imagine most of those law enforcement calls were about such idiots.

Still the stats shown in the video really are interesting. I wonder how much it will change now that there is a pay scale for residents, non-residents, and foreigners. Personally, I think anyone without a MT, WY, or ID driver's license should have to pay more to visit and there should be a limit on how many non-MT, WY, and ID vehicles are allowed into the park each day. I hear it's gotten so bad in there in recent years that MANY locals no longer want to go in because of the crowds and endless traffic jams. Maybe a tourist passenger train is needed after all?

02/12/2026

This is your reminder to always double check your vehicle after getting it serviced. Also, NEVER use Butte Subaru in Butte, Montana if you want to stay alive and safe.

My mom took in the family spare car to Subaru this week. She's been driving it since the Jeep is down and the car needed an oil change, alignment, and tire rotation. $206 later she got the car back with an estimated $2300 in further repairs.

The problems for this $2300? Basic leaks that can easily be done in a day, entirely new brakes, and a new pcv valve. Basically about $600 in parts and $1700 in labor costs for something a high school student could do. Clearly, they just saw an older lady walk in and saw an easy mark to get as much money out of as possible.

What's worse you may ask???

One brake is "bent" after they first say the brakes were all good. Said nothing about the damn thing being BROKEN which was 100% obvious in their provided pictures. Broken is far different than being a little bent!

So, I took the tire off and the brakes to only have the broken piece fall off as soon as the caliper pressure was taken off. I replaced both rear brakes and cleaned everything up to keep them the same, but as shown in the photo, the old brakes were almost new. Yet, according to Butte Subaru, they all need to be changed. So greedy!

This is just the start of the blunders. 9, yes I said 9 of the 20 bolts securing the rims and thus the tires to the car were not even torqued down! 3 of the bolts were not even hand-tightened!!! Basically, only one bolt of each tire was tightened and torqued down. I had even opened the hood to find the brake cylinder cap was off and the hose clamp for the engine filter was still loose and partially off the engine. They said the engine filter needed to be replaced which is clearly also new and just needed a quick tap out.

I guess their techs never do any double checks or care about the quality of their work???

There were so many DANGEROUS mistakes that could have resulted in a major accident or even horrible injury to my mom if she had driven the car on the highway to work and happened to hit a bump just right. A blown tire due to untightened bolts would have been a good case scenario.

So, if you are in the Butte area, take your vehicle elsewhere! Avoid Butte Subaru like the plague. Remember to always double check your vehicle after any service anywhere you get work done. Usually, I find tires not torqued enough or under inflated, but this experience was a new reminder to double check stuff. Needless to say, my family and I will be doing any repairs ourselves.

12/25/2025

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

How many of you got some cool Montana rocks for Christmas?

11/28/2025

I have a Black Friday sale going on today and this weekend at my Etsy shop. 75% OFF market price!!!

Several of the rocks on there are cheaper than ever before. So, if there is one of our rocks that you have been watching, this may be the best time to purchase.

As for the rock in the below photos, this is what the orange travertine from Montana looks like. This piece is not for sale and is one of my mom's favorite garden rocks that we recently had to move to keep it away from trespassing thieves.

11/12/2025

Anyone else catch tonight's Northern Lights show? I was in Butte finishing up blowing the sprinkler lines out at my mom's house when I looked up and noticed pink and green everywhere despite the city lights. By the time I got out of town, they had faded considerably, but still rather colorful.

07/26/2025

Looking for some authentic Butte, Montana covellite for sale?

Met with a lady today looking to sell some nice pieces of Butte covellite and two specimens of Butte enargite. Everything needs a nice wash off and perhaps a short acid bath to really shine them up since the pieces have been sitting in a storage box since the late 1980s.

The two larger covellite pieces are higher grade with great color. Both pieces are nice as specimens or can be cut up for cabs. With the price of covellite going up every year with its popularity, it is getting very difficult to even find a single piece for sale with several pieces. Her asking price is closer to market price, but I think it's very fair for the pieces quality (just out of my broke ass price range).

The enargite pieces have small crystals, but the bigger piece is mostly enargite. Both would be great specimens for a Butte collector.

There is one covellite, bornite (crystals), and pyrite combo (last photo) that is a spectacular specimen for a Butte collector. Its little pocket is neat to check out! Also a nice small piece of Digenite too!

If you are genuinely interested, send me a message for her contact information.

07/05/2025

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Did anyone else catch Butte's fireworks show and parade? This year's parade was really long in comparison to past years.

04/12/2025

Just a friendly reminder that this weekend is the rock show in Helena at Helena's Civic Center. Helena and Hamilton typically have the best rock shows in the state, so if you can go, you should check it out! Helena usually has a big kids area on the second floor and is affordable to attend with the whole family.

For more information, you can check out the club's Facebook at Helena Mineral Society.

03/24/2025

Looking for something to get your friend or loved one for Easter this year?

Our Etsy shop is still open, and we have over 80 different rocks and mineral pieces available for sale right now with all pieces below current market prices. Most of our pieces are from right here in Montana like those shown in these photos. We have some material only available from us and some common stuff like amethyst quartz crystals from the Little Gem Mine that are very popular and highly sought after by collectors right now.

We have a nice selection of Butte minerals, some Montana Wonderstone, some rare Montana fluorite crystal specimens, lots of agates and petrified wood, and even some pieces from around the USA and the world. We even have turquoise available for sale that originates from the world-famous Blue Gem Mine in Nevada.

If you are looking for a new rock, mineral, or crystal, check out our Etsy shop today by clicking on the below link!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/montanarockhounding

In other news…
It has now been a year since we started designing and coding our new website. It has been a long process and we are in the final stretch now. Our website is huge and its +250 webpages are full of information about Montana’s rocks, geology, minerals, and culture. We will be launching with over 2,500 items available for sale including some really nice specimens! I just keep filling up wheelbarrows with rock to list for sale on the website and it may be getting out of hand…

Anyways, it’s going to be awesome, and we hope all of you can check it out when we officially go live.

12/25/2024

We here at Montana Rockhounding would just like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Address

Butte, MT

Website

http://www.montanarockhounding.com/, http://www.etsy.com/shop/montanarockhounding

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