All children love small pebbles. Children like to collect colourful pebbles and decorate them at home. As a kid, I used to love collecting stones. The story of lost gold mines, buried black opal necklace and priceless gems has increased my appetite for stones. Of course, the pebbles I collected were just beautiful stones, smoothed by distant currents, ending up in my dirty pockets.As a teenager, I once visited the Natural History Museum in New York and was fascinated by gem collections. The world's largest crystal ball, a replica of the Hope Diamond and an opal weighing over a hundred pounds have all entered my dreams. A few years later I would choose geology as my college major.