The oldest fossil in retired paleontologist Wayne Mills’ collection is 500 million years old. But age doesn’t always determine the value of an unearthed stone, the Central Coast local explained.
“Different rocks have different meanings to different people,” said Mills, a longtime member of the Orcutt Mineral Society. “One of my friends in Paso gets really excited when she finds a rock shaped like a heart. She has an amazing heart rock collection.”
As an avid geology enthusiast, Mills joined the Orcutt Mineral Society—a local nonprofit dedicated to all things lapidary—in 1994. This year marks the club’s 54th annual Rainbow of Gems Show and Sale, which brings together dozens of rare-rock collectors and jewelry crafters from across the state.
More than 60 vendors will be on-site at the upcoming three-day event, slated to kick off at Nipomo High School on Friday, Aug. 5. Along with countless rock displays, the gathering will also include arts demonstrations, kids activities, and food trucks, Mills said.
One of Mills’ responsibilities at the sale is overseeing the Treasure Chest, which is full of donated gems, fossils, and other items that will be raffled off on the show’s last day, Sunday, Aug. 7.
“They have some really neat prizes. In fact, I’m looking at one right now,” Mills said over the phone. “It’s a really cool specimen of native copper from Michigan.”
Mills said he recently polished the copper, which he’s donating to the Treasure Chest from his own collection, although he admitted it was something he felt tempted to keep.
“As you can imagine, I have a lot of rocks at home,” Mills said. “I have more rocks than I know what to do with. I try to share them with people from time to time, but it’s kind of hard to let them go. It’s kind of like giving your children away.
“But I’m getting old. My kids are not going to know what to do with them,” Mills continued. “So if I can get them into a home where people would appreciate them, then that’s good.”
A couple of days after the Rainbow of Gems Show, Mills will be leading a presentation on rocks and fossils local to the Central Coast during the Orcutt Mineral Society’s next monthly meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 9, at 7 p.m. at the Oasis Center in Orcutt.
The club regularly meets at the venue on the second Tuesday of each month, and walk-ins are always welcome. Regardless of age, it’s never too late—or early—to pick up rock collecting as a hobby. Mills was a teenager when he acquired his first handful of fossils, he said, which he still owns.
“My mother asked me, ‘What do you want to do for your summer vacation?’—the year I graduated from high school, 1963,” Mills recalled. “I said that I wanted to go to Alaska to go commercial fishing with my uncle.”
During one of the boating trips that followed, Mills said his uncle dropped him off on Kodiak Island to explore for about 45 minutes. He stayed on the lookout for Kodiak bears but ended up spotting a few 250-million-year-old fossils instead.
“I just hoped no bears were around because it was pretty quiet,” Mills said, laughing. “But I just looked around and found some of my first fossils there. It was a pretty neat experience.”
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood is on the lookout for heffalumps and woozles. Send comments to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 4, 2022.
