- Lyndon Johnson has maybe logged more miles walking than anyone in Minnesota.

His passion is collecting agates.

Every year, Lyndon walks hundreds of miles of fields, stream beds, beaches, and road ditches in search of his next prized rock.

One of the first questions I like to ask any collector is, how did you get started?

And Lyndon certainly has a fun story to share.

- Doug, I've started collecting, I should say rock hunting and collecting agates for about 30 years.

Seriously.

I started as a kid, but it really got to be a passion.

When my daughters got old enough to go for walks, there was like three and four or three and five.

And my youngest daughter, crystal, she found a three quarter pound agate in the day.

She found that she was having this crabby tantrum day and nothing was making her happy.

And we went for a walk and went rock hunting.

And next thing I know, she's pouting again.

And she plops her butt on the ground 'cause she wasn't finding anything.

And here she almost sat on this beautiful three quarter pound egg.

So from then on we really got, and I've become a self-taught geologist.

I haven't technically went to school, but I've done so much research that I've actually done classes for state university geologists in my presentations.

I like to show people what I found because what I found they can find.

And I, I do tell 'em, I tell 'em anywhere there's rocks.

You never know what's there until you look.

I like field hunting in the spring, but I found nice stuff in a combination of everywhere, rivers, lake edges.

But fields are my favorite.

I walked so much through my 30 years that I figure I've walked between 30,000 to 35,000 miles, which is more than the circumference of the world.

And along with other questions I get asked is value of agates.

And agates do have a value.

It's just like rubies and emeralds.

It depends on the quality, but they will sell.

You can go to shows and sell 'em, but they can be worth thousands of dollars.

- Do you ever look at your collection of agates and, and other rocks and are just blown away by what you have done?

- That's exactly why I have my setup down here.

Kind of like a museum.

Sometimes I just sit down here and, and I just can't believe myself what I've stumbled on through the 30,000 miles walked.

- So show me some other ones.

- Now, when I was talking about different qualities of gemstones, this is a natural water washed.

I've, I've actually been offered $4,000 for her.

And the reason is this is a perfect digit.

And so when you talk about qualities, you're looking for the different color contrast, nice color contrast.

And as it's solid, it's not mixed with other rock.

And it's laced all the way around and it's not broken.

This is one of my favorite eye AOTs.

It, it's probably one of the bigger, nice quality eye AOTs ever, ever found for sure.

Mine.

It's two and a quarter pounds and AOTs are rare.

They only two places in the world you can find 'em.

One is Minnesota, one is South Africa.

So they're, they're rare.

- It's called an eye egg.

- I egg it.

And a example of eye agates, they have the perfect ground circles.

They're a little more prevalent here, but when you look under the, the right light, this is eyeballs after eyes.

It's just solid eyes.

And, and it's really, really rare.

- And you found this in Minnesota?

- Yep.

Found this in Sterns County, Minnesota.

And when you find stuff like this, it, it really what makes you get addicted?

You, you, it's like gold fever.

I like to call myself like the Minnesota, Indiana Jones.

It's trying to find a new discovery.

What, what you're gonna stumble onto.

You just never know.