Montana Gems of Philipsburg — Local services in Philipsburg

I took my young adult daughter here because she loves this sort of stuff. She got a bag that had some sapphires in it. She happily went through it for hours. Montana Gems of Philipsburg has a great set-up. You go into the street-level store first and choose the type of bag you want to go through. They have some great loaded bags for kids. Once you buy your bag, you take it outside and downstairs to the screening area. The workers there show you what to do and what you're looking for. They have all the supplies you need. When you are done, they go through what is left just to make sure you didn't accidently leave anything good behind. There are plenty of tables to sit at. Some are in the sun, and some are in the shade. When the weather is hot, they have misters that cool things off nicely. One of the misters was a little vigorous, so we moved to the other end of the table so we wouldn't be drenched. Just so you are prepared, be aware that your clothes will most likely get a little dirty, depending on the type of bag you get. It's just dirt and clay, though. It'll wash out. When you are done, you take your treasures back up to the store where they will evaluate your gems. You can choose to have some fired to bring the colors out more. They tell you the cost, then you can decide. It's quite reasonably priced. They also tell you which ones can be cut, and you can choose to have that done, or just take the gems home as they are. If you get them cut, they ship them to you in 3-6 months. My daughter had a great time here, and she's already planning...

My husband and I visited this amazing little treasure trove in September 2017.

The set up is fairly straightforward. The shop, the gravel room, (bags of gem filled gravel) and the outside area where you wash and sort the gravel looking for the gems.

We had a very entertaining afternoon as we searched for sapphires from our selected bag of gravel. We were assured there would be sapphires to find, and then the hunt was on!

The staff we met were very friendly and helpful, spending time with us as we learned what to look for and even inspected our reject pile of gravel.. subsequently finding several sapphires that we had missed (the technique is a little more tricky than you'd think!).

We ended up with about a dozen uncut sapphires with five of those being excellent unflawed "cutable" quality. We were thrilled! And immediately decided to have those sapphires cut and polished. The stunning results were mailed to us about three months later and now our granddaughters are wearing beautiful earrings created from the sapphires we found on our trip.

Our entire experience at Montana Gems of Philipsburg was really great. We would be glad to go again and recommend...

Could not have been more fun! We had so much fun in the morning with Doug that we came back in the early evening for another round of sapphire mining. After we had gone through our gravel, he actually went over it again for us to be sure we hadn't missed any gems. Amazing!

When we came back in the early evening, Doug and Chrissy stayed late to help us. Talk about superior customer service!

We highly recommend spending a bit more for the bags of Missouri River gravel. Our found stones were really nice. We've done sapphire mining before, but this time we spent less and got more.

The jewelry selection in the shop is good. They have really nice items and pricing is affordable.

Make the trip to Montana Gems as an excursion not to be missed. We plan on coming back for more.

See, Montana Doug? We left you a good review! Lol Thanks for making our mining experience a...