Terms of sale

These terms apply to lithorium.rocks and to anything bought through it. Using the site or placing an order means you accept them.

Who you are buying from

Lithorium is a sole proprietorship operating from San Jose, California, United States, selling mineral specimens, curated specimen boxes, and rough lots. Contact runs through the contact page.

How an order is made

A listing on this site is an invitation to buy, not a binding offer. An order is formed when payment is completed through Stripe and the shop sends a confirmation. The shop may decline or cancel an order and refund it in full, and will say why. The reason is usually the same one: the piece sold first somewhere else.

Prices and availability

Prices are in United States dollars and exclude shipping and any applicable sales tax, both of which are shown at checkout before you pay.

Almost every piece here is the only one of it. A listing can go from available to sold between the moment you open it and the moment you press the button. Where that happens, the payment is refunded in full.

A piece with no price is not for sale. It is photographed and recorded in the catalog, and an absent price means exactly that rather than an invitation to make an offer.

If a price is listed wrongly, the shop may cancel and refund the order rather than fulfill it at the wrong number. It will not quietly charge you a different amount than the page showed.

What the listings claim, and what they do not

Every listing is written by hand and photographs the actual piece you will receive. Weights, sizes, and mineral properties are given where they were measured and left out where they were not. An absent field means unrecorded, not zero.

Mineral identifications on curated boxes and rough lots are read from the photograph rather than confirmed by laboratory testing, and the listings say so. Where a specimen has been tested or its source documented, the listing says that instead.

Colors vary between screens. A specimen that looks slightly different in your hand than on your monitor is a monitor, not a misdescription, and that is one reason the return window exists.

The shop makes no metaphysical, healing, or medical claims about anything it sells. Where a listing repeats a traditional or metaphysical association it is reporting what people say about a stone, not asserting that it is true. Nothing here is sold as a treatment for anything.

Payment

Payment is taken by Stripe on Stripe's own hosted page. This site never receives or stores your card details. Your statement will show a descriptor including LITHORIUM.

Delivery and risk

Shipping is within the United States only, by USPS, at the rates on the shipping page. Risk of loss passes to you on delivery by the carrier, and the shipping page sets out what happens when a package is damaged or does not arrive.

Delivery estimates are the carrier's and are not guaranteed.

Returns

The returns and refunds page forms part of these terms. In short: 14 days from delivery, the piece back in the condition it left in, item price refunded, original postage not.

The tools and the map

The browser tools and the rockhounding map are provided for interest and are free to use. Field information is not a permit and not a safety assessment. Access rules, claim boundaries, seasons, and land status change, and it is on you to confirm that a site is legal and safe to collect at before you go. Rockhounding involves real hazards. The shop is not responsible for what happens on a trip you took after reading a map.

Photographs and writing

The photographs and the listing text on this site belong to Lithorium, except where credited otherwise. You may quote from them with attribution and a link to the piece. Republishing the catalog wholesale, or using this material to list the same or similar goods elsewhere, is not permitted.

Buying a specimen transfers the rock, not the rights to the photographs of it.

Automated access

Reading this site with a script or an AI agent is allowed and the shop publishes files to make it easier: llms.txt, agents.md, and a full catalog at /api/specimens. The terms in agents.md apply to that use. Fetch at a reasonable rate and identify yourself.

No agent may complete a purchase. Checkout requires a person at Stripe, by design. An agent may take a buyer to a listing; it may not pay for one.

Limitation of liability

The site and its content are provided as they are. To the fullest extent the law allows, the shop's total liability for any claim connected to an order is limited to the amount you paid for that order, and the shop is not liable for indirect or consequential loss.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud, or any liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including your rights as a consumer under the law of your state.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict of law rules. Any dispute goes to the state or federal courts located in Santa Clara County, California.

Before that, write to the shop. Most of what reaches a court over a rock could have been settled by an email.

Changes

These terms may be updated. The version that applies to your order is the one published when you placed it. The date in the margin is the date of the last change.