Jacob's Geodes

Jacob's Geodes is a salvage yard and dig them yourself mining operation in Hamilton, IL. In 2010, one needed to pay $18 per 5 gallon bucket. 5 gallons of geodes is pretty heavy! Something with wheels like a large wheeled wagon or hand truck would be very useful. There are a lot of geodes in bands in the shale/clay. We were instructed to try to find very round ones that would be more likely to be hollow than solid. The hollow ones are considered more desirable. Many geodes were filled with kaolinite, a pure white pasty mineral.  I have yet to have come up with a way to open the geodes. Typically they are opened with a soil pipe cutter, or sawed open. However just digging them out was fun in and of itself.