![]() In the years since we have focused on servicing an exclusive group of collectors – many which would come and visit to select their pieces. We were inspired by Jackie’s ability to create and grow a business focused on connecting people around a shared interest in beautiful mineral spheres. We built a good friendship with Jackie and when she shifted her focus to write her best-selling book “The Art of Conscious Creation” and to launch we made an arrangement to acquire Spheres To You around 2007. She used to say “you always have the best stuff” when she would come to visit us at our Rare Earth Trading booth. Jackie had built a terrific business focused on unique sphere specimens and we became one of her primary suppliers. We met Jackie Lapin who was then owner of Spheres To You in the mid-1990s at the Quartzsite PowWow show. We teach our team members to bring out the best in the stones they are cutting. We teach a different approach that focuses on quality over quantity and instills a curiosity and respect for the natural patterns and characteristics of the stones. This is because in many cutting operations, people are taught bad habits of only cutting fast for volume: they do not “see or respect” the stones. For our cutters, we have deliberately hired team members who have never cut stone. Like Highland Park Lapidary, our cutting operation is managed and run daily by our American team members in China. We do larger scale custom production cutting of beads, slabs, cabs, spheres and petrified wood in our factory in China. ![]() We expanded our custom cutting services to provide commercial cutting services in the US at our Austin TX shop for short run slabs, cabs and sphere orders. We also began importing containers of material into the US from around the world. In our commitment to making superb material available to our customers, we expanded our focus to include buying collections and rock shops in North America. Not satisfied with this level of performance, John set out to learn diamond technology, which over the course of 10 years resulted in our Highland Park Lapidary High Speed Sphere machine and grinding cups, which can do a coarse grind on a 2.5-inch ball between 10-15 minutes down from the 6-8 hours it used to take. The max number of spheres that could be produced with this technology was 35-40 a week. We used to run 35 conventional sphere machines using silicon carbide grit. Up until 2010, Rare Earth Trading Company (was run as a side business focused on unique agate specimens, cabochons, spheres and rough rock. I had moved to Silicon Valley and then Boston building software companies and managing teams in the US, India and Eastern Europe. He worked full-time in the Computer Semiconductor Industry, which led him to Silicon Valley, and then Austin TX, followed by India and China as the industry evolved. Over 20 years ago John started Rare Earth Trading while living in Ohio. As time passed, this became an impetus for Highland Park Lapidary 30 plus years later. While both pieces of equipment worked, we almost give up lapidary because we could not achieve the results we had hoped for. The saw was a Highland Park 10-inch gravity feed saw and the grinder was a Rock Rascal. We got our first slab saw and grinder later that year. We remember the thrill of digging thunder eggs at Priday Ranch (now Richardson’s Ranch) and finding Lake Superior Agates in Muscatine Iowa. At that time you could find nice material along the roadside, as the freeway system was newer then. John was 10 and I was five and we stopped at nearly every road cut to collect stones and soil samples. It all started in 1970 when my brother John and I got bit by the rock bug and started collecting rocks on a family vacation around the United States and Canada. People ask us all the time how we ended up with Rare Earth Trading Co, Highland Park Lapidary and Spheres To You with customers and operations spanning multiple continents. The Rare Earth Trading Co, Spheres To You and Highland Park Lapidary Story
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