Susan meet Debby Schlutter (chief
design person for pin.ca) (250) 744-3558 deb@pin.ca
Debby meet Susan Thompson.
Summer:
ph.
(208)374-5474 fax (208)374-5356
Cellular 949 939
1904
Home 208 374
5360
Deb,
Replace the North Carolina Shoal
Creek ad on our front page with
“
They have a mine, equipment and a
general store at Spencer Idaho.
Asking price is 3
million.
The large picture of the gemstone is
a rock now in the Smithsonian
The mine is what you see in the
pictures.
They sell over $200,000.00 (two
hundred thousand dollars in opal from the store each year, mostly retail)
They also sell gas and other general
store items.
Pictures show them cutting some of
the opal.
I will put the text of our audio
interview underneath: (Hope to get the audio done Friday or
Monday
Eric
Opal Mine Radio Text
I am speaking today with Bob and Susan Thompson who
operate the Opal Mountain Mine in Spencer Idaho.
1)
Rock show
Approached by Smithsonian and how impressed they are
with quality.
You finally agree to give them some
pieces.
2)
Did you have any idea how big this
would be when you started?
This was a retirement hobby that has become completely
out of hand.
We have more buyers than we can supply and everybody
wants me to work harder.
I want to retire.
3)
Can you tell us about the mining
process and the equipment you use?
We started with some heavy equipment pushing things bach
in a ____acre circle. We had ______________(describe
equipment)
Then we started digging using
_______________
We only went down 40 feet, but the deeper you go the
better the opal.
The government estimated we had 46 years of mining at
this site.
There could be anywhere up to ______or ______Million
dollars worth of opals in here.
4)
Susan, you handle the sales.
- How do you sell your product?
We bought a general store which we operate in
Spencer not far from the mine.
Selling the opals in not the problem. (stop here as you
would in a conversation)
We went on the QVC network one
year.
We had 1000 opal pennants with us and they sold
out in 4 minutes.
Eric: Really
They invited us back in the fall and we sold out
again.
Eric: Do you sell most of your opal
retail?
We sell a lot of the opal retail and the rest we sell to
our wholesale customers.
We can’t keep up with the wholesale orders any more so
we just put them on a list and perhaps we will increase production one day and
be able to supply more.
Susan. You are in a very fortunate situation.
I want to go back to Bob;
Bob.
5)
Business would seem good. You are
currently taking over $200 Thousand dollars in opals from the mine every season.
Could someone increase that to a million dollars a season.
This mine has the ability to produce a million dollars
of opals yearly
but I want to get out. I want to retire and what our
clients want is to have me working harder so they can buy more of our product.
The mine has been very good to us. We have made a lot of
money and quite frankly my wife and I want to get out of here and spend
some of the money we’ve made while we are still young enough to enjoy
it.
You can reach Bob and Susan at the