Discover shining gems at Prospector Days

Sat., July 17, 2004

Steve Christilaw Correspondent

Beware of Gold Fever!

Dave and Elizabeth Fletcher, owners of Irv’s, 11907 E. Trent Ave., are putting on their second-annual Prospector Days today and tomorrow, from noon until 4 p.m. in their parking lot.

The rock and gem shop plans a full slate of games for the kids and demonstrations for the whole family on gold panning, rock hounding and lapidary.

“We’re hoping this turns into something really big,” Dave Fletcher said. “It’s a lot of fun for the kids and it’s great to see them get excited about what they find.”

The shop has an array of rocks and gems from around the world and the equipment needed to turn them into jewelry and objet d’art. The Fletchers also offer classes in various aspects of lapidary — the art of cutting precious and semiprecious stones.

“Kids will have a chance to pan for their own gold and we’ll have demonstrations for the adults on how to pan for gold,” Dave Fletcher said. “And we have sapphire gravel from the sapphire mines in Montana, and we’ll have demonstrations on how to shake out the sapphires. People can even have the sapphires they find cut and faceted.”

For the kids, there will be games and contests where they can win Irv’s Cash Cards good for the purchase of polished rocks and minerals from the shop.

Irv’s was opened more than 25 years ago by Irv Pils Sr.

Elizabeth is Irv’s daughter, and together with her husband, has expanded the store to include a variety of gemstones, fossils and crystal geodes, as well as a full-service coffee bar called Java Rocks.

“We’ll have the shop filled with fun stuff and the coffee bar will be open both days,” she said. “We’ll have hot dogs for the kids and granitas for the grownups.”

Prospector Days will also offer an opportunity to get in on the shop’s annual Ugly Nut contest.

The nuts in question are Tagua nuts, also known as “Vegetable Ivory,” carved by entrants. Particularly friendly to carvers, the nuts’ clean, white meat was once used to make buttons.

Everyone who enters the shop during August votes on which carving is the ugliest. The winner gets an emerald ring valued at $1,000.

“We’ve been doing this contest for a while,” Dave Fletcher explained. “There’s no entry fee for the contest. You come in, buy the nut, and when you carve it and bring it in, we give your money back.”

And, both Fletchers point out, ugly is strictly in the eye of the beholder.

What may be ugly to one person is art to another. One artist, not entered in this year’s contest, carved a likeness of each of the anchorpeople on one of the local news teams.

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