What Rocks Are Made Of

This week, I’ll share with you a story about one of the (many) most painful money mistakes I made, and what it taught me about value and myself. 

About 3 years into a newly discovered passion for antique shopping (pretty far in for someone it took 40 years to let go of $75 bucks to buy an old toy horse), I pulled into a small desert ghost town in the middle of nowhere with a population to match. The perfect setting for an old house with a familiar musty smell and shelves sparsely filled with random objects calling itself an antique store. 

The shop keeper was weathered. His eyes said he’d been on the wrong side of a rifle barrel, and he was still here, stronger for it. It was a comforting feeling for a tourist like me. I walked through the store, disappointed there was nothing I was interested in. Until I saw something that caught my eye on the way out. A piece of blue marble? Rock? Tile? In the shape of a brick. 

I’d been hunting for turquoise the entire trip, and so to quell my disappointment, I imagined the unidentifiable blue object must be turquoise. A big chunk of it that somebody had cut out of a giant piece of it.

I turned it over to find the price. 215. Two hundred fifteen dollars seemed fair compared with  the jewelry I’d seen in the stores leading to this one.

I carried it up to the counter, pulled the money out of my wallet, and handed it to the man.  He looked at me, surprised as he took it. His reaction told me everything I needed to know. The price was $2.15, not $215. But he wasn’t there to tell me I was wrong. 

I got back in the truck with what had been a semi-precious gemstone a minute ago, and now was nothing more than a paving brick.

“You’re so stupid” was the first thing I told myself. 

“You should never have thought you could be good at this” 

“You should just shop in stores that retail objects of mass production, that are all priced the same. At least you know where you’re at in a place like that.” I continued

A few towns later, knowing the risk of the pain of losing my pride, I walked into another store. I would have to accept it was nobody’s responsibility to be fair or to do what would make me feel good, even if that’s the way I wished it was.

When I got home, I realized why I went on the trip at all. It was the turquoise I wanted, but the shop keeper's depth I needed if I was going to get better at antique shopping.

I share this with you because if you want something, there’s probably a good reason for it. Keep going! If you keep trusting yourself, after experience suggests there’s no reason in the world that you should, chances are real good you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for.