Gift Shop & Snack Bar

Gift Shop

The museum gift shop is stocked with inexpensive items for children and teachers, including a large selection of minerals, rocks, and fossils priced at $3 or less, plus printed educational materials. We also offer jewelry, books, mining memorabilia, figurines and carvings, T-shirts and caps, and a selection of ultraviolet lights.

Normal hours of operation are 10:00am to 3:30pm on all days that the museum is open for tours (see calendar). Anyone contemplating a visit to the gift shop outside our normal schedule is advised to call ahead (973-209-7212) to inquire if the shop can be opened that day. It is best to call ahead in any case, even during the normal museum schedule, because the gift shop might be closed and museum personnel working elsewhere if tours for a particular day were canceled.

Credit cards accepted in the gift shop include Visa, MasterCard, and Discover. Currently we are not equipped for credit-card orders over the phone, so all purchases must be made in person. However, we hope soon to have more options available for purchases by phone or mail order. Please watch this site for further developments.

In addition to the items stocked in the gift shop, the museum maintains a thriving business in mineral sales. For particulars see the Mineral Sales section of this web site.

Snack Bar

The snack bar and tables adjacent to the gift shop are provided for the convenience of our visitors. Many people bring their own food to Sterling Hill, but our snack bar offers an assortment of food and drink items for the hungry and desperate. Hot items include personal pizzas, hot dogs, corn dogs, and miners' pasties (Cornish meat pies, a traditional miner's lunch). Other snack items include candies, cookies and crackers, popsicles, ice-cream cones and sandwiches, and gum. Drinks include the Snapple line of beverages, assorted sodas, bottled water, coffee, tea, and hot chocolate.

Seating is provided for approximately 80 people in the snack-bar building, and an additional 180 people can be accommodated at picnic tables beneath a covered pavilion outdoors. During cold or inclement weather large groups can be seated in the Geotech Center. Trash cans and recycling containers are provided at all of these facilities.

In the interests of not having to mine this planet any more than is necessary, we ask our visitors to recycle all of their glass bottles, plastic items, and aluminum cans while here.

Read more about recycling: A Mine is a Terrible Thing to Waste.