If you scroll through eBay for items from Wyoming, you’ll eventually bump into one of the hundreds of boulders and stones that Dave Freitag of Lander is selling.
Perhaps “offloading” is more apt in the case of some of his listings. It’s been about five years since Freitag first posted two giant nephrite jade boulders, and though the $11,500 and $12,500 prices “aren’t written in stone,” as he quipped in the item descriptions, these boulders are going nowhere fast.
“It takes a special person to wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’m going to buy rock today,’” said Freitag. “You can’t get rich off of rock sales.”
Perhaps not financially rich, but selling rocks is perhaps surprisingly rich for interesting stories.
Buyers For Big Boulders
Take those two giant boulders, for example. They were unearthed sometime in the 1960s or 1970s in the Gas Hills area of the Wind River Basin and were the only uncut remnants of the former Majestic Jade Rock Shop in Riverton.
When Freitag bought the boulders in 2020, he had to hire a crane and two flatbed trucks to haul them the relatively short distance from Riverton to his farm near Lander. And he doesn’t even know exactly what’s inside; a diamond wire saw is needed to cut them open to find out.
Even if the jade hidden inside is probably medium quality, at best, Freitag could more easily sell them if he were willing to cut into the boulders. Buyers from China, for example, are less concerned about the quality and will buy fractured jade that’s “crappy,” but the boulders are so unwieldy and expensive to transport as-is that the eventual buyer, whoever that may be, will need to really want them.
“I’m not paying for the logistics,” Freitag said.
Another rare specimen Freitag has listed on his eBay store, Wyoming Stones Rocks, is a 195-pound nephrite jade boulder his wife found in 2021 that was just cresting the surface of the ground between two sagebrush. One tap with a hammer — the hammer bounces back when it’s jade — confirmed she’d found something special.
“We can tell it’s a higher quality Wyoming Green,” Freitag said of the jade inside. He’s asking $9,500 for this boulder, though like the larger ones, he’s more-than willing to entertain reasonable offers. “When you sell a rock, you throw the spaghetti high on the wall to start out.”
The real value of these boulders, for those who appreciate such things, is how rare they are. Wyoming experienced three different jade rushes that mostly wiped out the supply of the state’s gemstone from sedimentary beds, Freitag said.
When Freitag showed the 195-pound boulder to a 97-year-old friend who similarly loves jade, that friend remarked: “I ain’t seen a boulder like that come out of the field since the ‘70s.”
A 12,700-pound nephrite jade boulder Dave Freitag has listed on eBay for $12,500. (Courtesy Dave Freitag) 
A 195-pound nephrite jade boulder Dave Freitag has listed on eBay for $9,500. (Courtesy Dave Freitag) 
A 12,700-pound nephrite jade boulder Dave Freitag has listed on eBay for $12,500. (Courtesy Dave Freitag)
From Gold to Garden Boxes
But don’t be fooled by the rocks that Freitag has got, rocks are one of several steppingstones in his Wyoming story. He arrived in the 1980s from Milwaukee in search of gold and has tried his hand at a lot of different things: cameras, fireworks, carpentry, writing, and hunting for jade, fossils, petrified wood, and dinosaur coprolite (fossilized feces).
In case you hadn’t guessed, Freitag likes to stay busy and try something new whenever boredom strikes, which explains how he went from prospecting for gold to his real passion of hunting for dinosaur fossils. That, in turn, led him to collecting dinosaur coprolite and a brief brush with fame on an episode of “Pawn Stars” in 2013.
Sitting on the couch one day watching TV, Freitag heard that the show’s host, Rick Harrison, was looking for coprolite — and Freitag just happened to have three pallets’ worth. One phone call and eight months later, Freitag made a brief appearance on the show and ultimately sold two large coprolite pieces to Harrison, though at about one-third of his initial asking price.
“I tried to get more, but you know how Rick is,” Freitag said of the show’s longtime host.
As he did on that show, Freitag has demonstrated a knack for finding value in items that other people might overlook. As a master carpenter, he previously crafted ornate cedar chests that he’d sell for upwards of $8,000 through another business, Cedar Forest Products.
Seeing how much wood ends up in the dump, Freitag was inspired to venture beyond chests into making raised garden boxes out of reclaimed wood.
“I suppose I could just sell rocks every day but eh, that’s kind-of boring,” Freitag said.
The first year Freitag started making the garden boxes, he sold hundreds by hawking them on the side of a street in Lander. He spent the winter busy making garden boxes in his barn — “I got them stacked out there like poker chips” — and, to keep things interesting, he’s taken a blowtorch to some of the boxes for a different look.
Dave Freitag of Lander, Wyoming, has been collecting Cowboy State jade for decades. (Courtesy Dave Freitag) 
Dave Freitag of Lander, Wyoming, has been collecting Cowboy State jade for decades. (Courtesy Dave Freitag) 
Dave Freitag of Lander, Wyoming, has been collecting Cowboy State jade and other gemstones for decades. (Courtesy Dave Freitag) 
Dave Freitag of Lander, Wyoming, has been collecting Cowboy State jade for decades. (Courtesy Dave Freitag) 
Dave Freitag of Lander, Wyoming, has been collecting Cowboy State jade for decades. (Courtesy Dave Freitag) 
Dave Freitag with a collection of uncut and unhammered Wyoming jade. All the Wyoming jade collectors and artisans at the Wyoming Jade Festival find their own pieces, although those as large as these are rare after the collecting boom of the 1930s. (Andrew Rossi, Cowboy State Daily) 
A few years ago, Freitag began making raised garden boxes that he sells across the state and this year, he's taken a blowtorch to the reclaimed wood for a different look. "I suppose I could just sell rocks every day but eh, that's boring." (Courtesy Dave Freitag)
‘It’s A Hard, Hard, Hard Hunt’
Those stacks of garden boxes make good company for the nearly 100 pallets filled with Wyoming rocks that are likewise stacked around Freitag’s 11-acre ranch.
Though he’s spent more a decade-plus buying most jade he comes across, even taking out a second mortgage at one point to purchase a collection from a woman in Casper, the thrill of the hunt has lost some of its luster.
The best of the best Wyoming jade was picked over long ago, Freitag said, which is why it was so exciting when his wife found that 195-pound boulder a few years ago. And part of the reason he has “so many irons in the fire” these days is because the market for jade has changed even in the decade-plus since he began buying and selling.
Freitag can still find buyers for lower quality and fractured jade — “I’ve got lots of crap jade here,” he said — but that’s not as interesting to sell.
The annual Wyoming Jade Festival, which Freitag helped organize along with Dave Barnett, is an opportunity to find some new pieces from a growing number of jade lovers who flock to Jeffrey City, but finding jade out in the wild is mostly a fool’s errand.
“It’s a hard, hard, hard hunt and I’m a prospector who can walk any hill,” Freitag said. “Every year, it becomes harder and harder to find out there.
