This week, The Geode Shop at Knott’s Berry Farm will celebrate 25 years in business. Owner Randy Elliott is happy to reach that milestone, though he’ll be the first to tell customers that’s not even a temporal blink compared to the ages of the rocks he sells. “That beauty has been locked up for 100 million-plus years,” Elliott said, holding up a freshly-sawn geode. Quartz crystals lined the inside of the hollow rock, which looked like it was solid when it was whole. The shop cuts about 32 tons of geodes each year, which come to Knott’s Berry Farm from deposits around the globe. With the average rock about 2 1/2 pounds, that’s more than 25,000 rocks split open. The rocks sit in a bin in front of the shop until a curious customer picks it up and pays to have it cleft in two with a special rock saw. It takes a trained eye to spot the stone oddities. Luckily, Elliott has spent years seeking out specimens around the globe. “Many times, it looks like an old rock on the ground. You don’t know until you’ve broken it open. I’ve crunched a lot of ugly, old rocks open,” he said. Some of the shop’s geodes are large, including one that several feet wide. It once belonged to Steve Wynn and was on display in one of his Las Vegas hotels. His wife snatched it in their divorce and found a more-than-willing buyer in Elliott. As for the types of minerals the shop carries, a better question is: What doesn’t it have? In one corner sits a large chunk of stibnite–antimony ore–that looks like a pile of nails glued together. Across the shop sit greenish chips of trinitite–the now slightly radioactive glass left behind in 1945 when the first atomic bomb was tested in the sands of a New Mexico desert. Aside from geodes, however, one of the shops biggest sellers is coprolite, the scientific name for fossilized dinosaur poop. “You can’t believe how popular it is,” Elliott said. It’s a hit with elementary school kids and is a popular stocking-stuffer at Christmas. “I’ve actually bought a $164,000 boat on dinosaur droppings,” Elliott said. One of his samples even bears a footprint of one dinosaur who wasn’t careful where he stepped after leaving his deposit for the ages. In addition to the dinosaur doo-doo, The Geode Shop sells other dinosaur fossils. The shop has on display Elliott’s private collection of dinosaur eggs, some of them extremely rare. Several suitors–including actor Steven Seagal and a Saudi prince–have tried to buy Elliott’s collection, he said, but he’s not selling at any price. He wants to keep them there for the education school children and others who wander into his shop. Elliott, a Fullerton resident, has long been a rockhound. He visited the park regularly when he was a kid, but not for the obvious reasons. “I didn’t ride the burros,” he said. “I spent all my time in the (old) rock shop, and panning for gold.” He worked for the DuPont chemical company for 17 years and sold rocks on weekends as a side business. A Knott’s employee ran across Elliott’s booth at the Orange County Fair. He jumped at the chance to make his true passion his livelihood, and The Geode Shop was born. One of the benefits for Elliott was the ability to visit different corners of the globe to chase rocks. One of his most memorable trips was to the Cueva de los Cristales in Mexico, where he braved temperatures above 120 degrees to get a glimpse at gypsum lances 36 feet long and several feet wide. Pictures of the trip adorn the shop’s walls. “This business,” the 63-year-old Elliott said, “has allowed me to go places you wouldn’t even imagine.” Video by Mark Eades, ocregister.com/video.