See the Jewelry

Often, I am asked, "How on Earth did you come up with the name "Intergalactic Mining"?" Jay and I used to go rock collecting/prospecting on a fairly regular basis before both our respective businesses grew to the point of consuming most of our spare time. The date was spring of 1992 and we were on our way to do some site survey work on our newly acquired mine lease, the Eastman Quarry on Deer Hill. We had been calling our loosely organized hobby mining company "P&R Mining. P&R stood for a bunch of things such as "Profit and Return", "Prospect and Result" and "Public Relation", but our favorite was a jab at an individual who had accused us (falsely) of certain illicit activities a year earlier. We both liked "Poach and Run" the best. Yet here we were about to conduct a fairly serious (for once) mining venture at a known and promising locality. "Poach and Run Mining" simply wasn't go to cut it. So we brain stormed the entire way to the mine. We briefly considered calling ourselves "White Mountain Mining", but we both felt there were quite enough mining companies named after mountains. And even though Plumbago and Sugar Hill were certainly mountains worthy of the honor of having a company named after them, this sort of name selection seemed rather dry and altogether too serious. In half serious frustration at out inability to come up with a decent name, we began joking about all the other miners in the state, mocking certain arrogant mind sets and the general aristocratic attitude that seemed to proliferate at the time. If they want an ego, we’ll give them an ego, we laughed, and came up with the most audacious name we could think of; "Intergalactic Mining- Earth Division". The name was an instant and total success. We made full color T-shirts, banners, and decals. Later, we made labels for our mineral specimens and people stole them... not the minerals, just the labels. I considered this to be the highest flattery. We still considered the name to be more or less a joke but with our discovery of the 4th of July Amethyst pocket the following year and the associated publicity, we were stuck with it. Who are the Intergalactic Miners? The Intergalactic Team consists of Me (Dennis Creaser), Jay Windover and Gary Howard. The idea for the partnership was originally a vague idea of mine to collect several like-minded people who were each very good at one particular, important aspect that could be applied to mining gems. With this in mind I watched for people that were decent, down to Earth, trustworthy and had skills or knowledge that I didn't have and would therefore make the impossible possible. Jay was the first person I met. He was very sensible, logical, realistic and a mechanical genius. I met Gary a few months later and found him to be extremely likable, very outgoing, easy to talk to, had excellent people-sense and was also the Fire Chief of a small city. I approached them about forming a union with me as the processing department, Jay as the equipment department and Gary as the public relations/red tape evasion department. The partnership worked flawlessly from day one and continues to work to this day. I suspect that part of our success is due to the fact that none of us have any delusions about getting rich at our chosen hobby and do it for the sheer joy of it.

creaserjewelers@aol.com