really saw how specimens are purchased by museums and purchased by private collectors. and by the time we graduated, we started this business called black hills minerals as this earth science supply house. eventually my younger brother neal, who was also a student at the school of mines, and bob farrar, one of his classmates, started working with us as well. with the three of us all going to the school of mines, we were problems there, because all of us chose not to go into industry. >> the first year was terrible, the second year was not so good but it was sort of turning into a business. ♪ >> as we kept going, we kept collecting more and more fossils and had the idea of it probably would work to sell these as display specimens. in 1978, we were going pretty strong. we were selling mostly fossils.