The first thing you notice when you step into BurGlen’s Natural Gems just outside of Franklin is the amazing diversity of gemstones, minerals and fossils from all over the world. Emeralds from Bolivia. Malachite from the Congo. Crystals from India. Fossilized insects from Brazil.

Burt Kahn, the owner and operator of BurGlen’s for 33 years, loves to share what he’s learned about the earth’s treasures. What began as a hobby turned into a lifelong passion that took him all over the globe. At 70 years old and nearing retirement, he’s still just as passionate as ever when he talks about 600 million-year-old fossils, the peculiar properties of a precious stone, or the customers who continue to frequent his store. He’s seen them all — Buddhist monks, diplomats, country music singers and vacationing families from all over the world looking for something beautiful to behold.

“It breaks down a lot of cultural barriers,” Kahn says. “They all love gems and minerals and fossils.”

With his extensive knowledge, he’s become a sought after expert for college geology professors, museum curators, school groups and tourists.

“You couldn’t ask for a better person. He helps you any way he can,” says Sonja Eldridge, who along with her husband Arlon owns Cowee Mountain Ruby Mine just up the road from BurGlen’s. They’ve been friends for 25 to 30 years.

One Thursday morning finds Kahn behind the counter, discussing jewelry with a Croatian family who came down from Canada on vacation. Other couples even plan trips around seeing Kahn.

“He knows everything,” says Darla Matthews, a good friend of Kahn’s. When she first met him, she was amazed at all the things he knew. “It was like talking to a living encyclopedia.”

But Kahn brushes off such accolades.

“I am blessed with a good memory,” he says.

And a quick wit.

“You got any fossils?” a customer asks Kahn over the phone one morning.

“You’re talking to one,” he replies.

BurGlen’s is a blend of Kahn’s first name and the first name of his longtime partner and recently deceased wife, Glenda. Originally from the Tampa area, he moved to Macon County to get away from the heat and congestion of Florida and fell in love with the mountains, as well as the rich geological history here. Macon County’s rubies, sapphires and amethysts once caught the eye of New York City’s Tiffany’s, but there weren’t enough gems to make it a lucrative enterprise. Still, corundum mines cropped up in the late 19th century, and other minerals such as mica and kaolin were hauled away by the trainload, creating a thriving local industry. This region includes some of the world’s oldest mountains and has a great diversity that lures lapidary lovers — plus, adds Kahn, the state boasts more than 300 different varieties of gems and minerals.

Kahn fell into his career by accident — literally. While recuperating for a year after a car accident, he saw a magazine ad about cutting gemstones. One thing led to another, and pretty soon he was taking classes in jewelry design, stone setting, gem cutting, and fossil preparation. He traveled overseas extensively — South America, Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa. He lived in Greece for three years, set up business contacts in foreign countries, and even toured the fabled King Solomon’s mines in southern Israel. It was like a picture right out of the Bible with its giant rock columns.

By setting up his own suppliers, he could eliminate the middle man and send shipments back to the States. He also realized that, like oil, there’s a finite supply of gemstones and there would always be a market of collectors who wanted something unusual, something rare, something pretty.

Like any other commodity, when supplies dip and demand rises, the price increases. So it is now with emeralds, once quite plentiful, now very rare.

These days, BurGlen’s is not just a tourist destination for Americans. Visitors from Europeans and Asian countries come by the store, thanks to a weak U.S. dollar that makes foreign currency stretch further.

In display cases, on shelves, and in hundreds of trays and boxes, the gemstones, minerals, fossils and jewelry items at BurGlen’s are presented like a library of the earth’s geological history. In addition to uncommon finds like meteorites from 16th century China, there are arrowheads, rubies, sapphires and aquamarine stones found in local mines and fields in Western North Carolina. One especially odd piece is Itacolumite, a naturally occurring sandstone that actually bends. Also known as “wiggle rock” or “bending rock,” it can become flexible when cut into thin strips. As Kahn explains, microscopic air pockets allow the stone to bend, and yet the silica in it also makes it tough enough for knife sharpening. Itacolumite is actually found in North Carolina (Stokes and McDowell counties) as well as Georgia, South Carolina, India, southern Brazil and northern England.

Kahn adds that Brazil has about 80 percent of the world’s gemstones, but by government mandate, if the gemstone cutters can use their native stones, they can’t be exported, so much of what makes it out of the country is of lower quality.

Customers will often come by BurGlen’s to see if any gems they’ve found might be worthy of cutting to make into jewelry. However, Kahn explains that only a very small percentage of most gems — perhaps one tenth of one percent of a given collection — are good enough to carve into jeweled shapes. Other customers stop in to find a stone or mineral they’ve been hunting for years, only to find it in BurGlen’s.

Brittle and rugged, smooth and polished, ancient and newly discovered, the collection at BurGlen’s includes common names like quartz and tigereye, but you’ll also come across unusual names like “velvet malachite” and “amytrine” (a glassy, candy-looking blend of amethyst and citrine).

Most of what you see in BurGlen’s is for sale, though some things, like the giant slab embedded with 450 million-year-old spiral-chambered goniatites, are simply for display. The goniatites died out about 300 million years ago and lived 5,000 to 8,000 feet under the sea, Kahn explains, but tectonic plate shifts over millions of years lifted these fossils high into mountains in Morocco.

Kahn also has trilobites, a fossilized frog, dinosaur eggs from a Hadrasaur found in China, oyster fossils from Texas, a whale vertebrae fossil from the Aurora River in eastern North Carolina, and petrified wood from Madagascar that dates back to the Triassic Period.

“It’s thrilling to hold a piece of history in your hands,” he says.

The Megalodon’s prehistoric teeth are especially fun to share with children’s groups who come into the store. The Megalodon was once the earth’s ultimate predator with a mouth nine feet wide and jaws that opened 11 feet tall. Precursors to the great white shark, they weighed about 50 to 60 tons and had a set of 200 teeth.

“Do you know what they ate?” Kahn asks a wide-eyed listener. “Anything they wanted.”

Kahn knows it’s not just the sparkle of a rare stone that gives it its luster. It’s the story behind it. And for more than three decades, he’s been more than happy to impart his knowledge to anyone willing to learn.

“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well,” he says.

Perhaps the biggest jewel of his job is interacting with customers.

“You find out you have so much in common with so many people,” he says. “I get a lot of information from my customers.”

Kahn’s key to success is simple: do whatever it takes to be successful. For him, that meant working 15 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, plus holidays and going without salary sometimes. In his peak years, he’d work from 4:30 or 5 in the morning until 11 at night. Lately, he’s slowing down some, looking forward to vacations, planning trips to destinations he’s always wanted to visit out West — Dinosaur Park, Glacier National Park, the Grand Canyon, Arches National Park.

Surely, it’ll be hard not to pass up a few heavy souvenirs to haul home. After all, Burt Kahn is the kind of guy who leaves no stone unturned.