FAQ About Buying and Selling Petrified Wood

What is the value of my petrified wood?

Every week people with dollar signs floating in front of their eyes ask me how much their petrified wood is worth. I feel so sad telling them that most kinds of petrified wood are unremarkable and not very valuable. If there was any money to be made collecting and selling petrified wood I would be a millionaire since my ranch is located in the middle of a petrified wood forest. But there isn't and I'm not. Most rock shops have a huge pile of petrified wood in the back yard that sits there decade after decade without selling.

If I send a photo will you price my wood?

Sure. I always enjoy seeing pictures of petrified wood. As with any stone, what doesn't sell for years at an asking price of $1.00 will sell unexpectedly for $10.00 if you find the right buyer at the right time. So any estimates I provide are a guess based on what I have previously experienced.

I buy petrified wood locally for about $0.35 per pound. (A five gallon bucket for $25.00.) I don't buy petrified wood by mail because shipping adds about $0.60 per pound to the cost.

I recommend one of the on-line auction sites such as eBay for pieces smaller than a football. For larger pieces I recommend your local newspaper's classified ads, a flee market, craigslist, or garage sales.

How much does petrified wood sell for?

Agatized petrified wood sells sparingly at retail for about $1.00 to $3.00 per pound. (Wholesale pricing; what rock shops pay for petrified wood; is about $0.15 to $0.50 per pound or even less for larger lots or larger sized logs.) Very nicely agatized petrified wood sells for up to $7.00 if it is transparent or if the wood grain shows up well or if it is a complete twig with fascinating patterns in the bark. If it doesn't look like petrified wood you might as well gravel your driveway with it.

A stump the size of a 5 gallon bucket might sell locally for around $100.

For the most part selling petrified wood logs is done on a local-pickup only basis... Because on large logs no common carrier is going to want to move them, and logs bigger than a 4 gallon bucket require palletization and shipping by truck, which often costs 2 to 5 times the price of the log.

Polished petrified wood of good quality can sell for up to $25 per pound if it is very colorful, or very distinctive.

Attributes that add value

• Bright pretty colors
• Many colors in the same stone
• Grain patterns show up distinctly
• The stone is transparent
• The wood is Opalized or Agatized
• The bark pattern shows up distinctly
• Interesting things like worm-holes, branching, druzzy, etc
• The entire round is intact

Attributes that detract from value

• Dull colors
• Little or no wood grain
• Opaque stone
• Cracks in the stone
• No visual clues to make it stand out as wood
• Composed of chalky or muddy material
• Only partially petrified

The most valuable petrified wood that I am aware of are the precious fire opal limb cast replacements that come from Virgin Valley, Nevada. A transparent pencil sized twig a few inches long with fire in it can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars. (It'll cost a thousand dollars to make a trip to the mines.)

I thought that you might enjoy some photos of petrified wood logs. Weight of these huge logs is between 2000 and 5000 pounds. Five years ago the asking price was $2000 each, though they are no longer for sale.

497	496 42" x 21"	495 36" x 32"	503 44" x 22"	505 45"x 35"
499 14" x 45"	504 55" x 28"	498 40" x 22"	502 30" x 34"	500 24" x 35"