Meet Luke Maas | Scientific Curiosities Dealer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Luke Maas and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Luke, how did you come up with the idea for your business?
When I was younger, I collected everything I needed to live on my own. I had kitchen utensils, laundry baskets, bathroom towels, and power tools. I thought I had everything I needed. Until the day I actually moved out. I had overlooked a crucial part of living on my own: The home decor. My walls and my shelves were pathetically empty. So I went on another buying spree. I decorated my first place like a Nature & Science Museum. I bought monkey skulls and meteorites. I had a woolly mammoth tooth and Kapton foil from the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission. My walls were decorated with anatomical art, exotic framed insects, and historical relics from around the world. I wanted everything to be a conversation piece. I noticed that when my friends visited, they would always politely fold their hands behind their back and begin examining my artifacts as if they were in a museum. I would have to encourage them to actually touch the pieces. I wanted them to connect to the world around them and to explore their curiosity. I wanted them to hold a real moon rock in their hands and ponder the eons it took for that rock to travel the solar system to end up here today. They would always tell me that my collection must have cost me a fortune. The truth is, it didn’t. A lot of this stuff is much more affordable than people would guess. Finding it is the hard part. That’s when it dawned on me. Everyone has a sense of curiosity. Everyone wants to explore nature, history, and the cosmos. Everyone loves a Nature & Science Museum. If I could just source the artifacts at a reasonable price, then I could carve a niche for myself as a curiosities dealer.

What should our readers know about your business?
The Golden Curiosity Shop is a place where everyone can indulge in their curiosity! Want to learn about space? We have meteorites, moon rocks, and NASA artifacts. Like dinosaurs? We have real fossils, books and illustrations. Do you like gems and crystals? We have you covered. History, biology, botany, anatomy? We’ve got that too, all of it for sale.

We have tons of free interactive exhibits including ferrofluid, plasma balls and pendulums. We have live glow-in-the-dark axolotls swimming around in our aquarium (axolotls are an extremely adorable and rare amphibian from Northern Mexico). We have a 400,000 volt Van de Graaff generator that will make your hair stand straight up if you are brave enough to put your hands on it. We even go to the local elementary schools and do experiments with kids to get them interested in S.T.E.A.M. (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics). We let children take turns lighting me on fire. And we do chemistry experiments that spew foam 25 feet into the air.

We also have a wide arrangement of jewelry, apparel, books, children’s toys, skulls, insects, and natural art hand crafted by local artisans. I’d like to give a shout-out to Gray Ghost Creations, the artist behind most of our terrariums. She makes stunning natural scenes using real plants, bones, and insects all of which are legally and sustainably sourced from the furthest regions of the earth.

But that’s just the beginning. We have plans to expand our store to include insect pinning classes, guest speakers from local scientists, and to include even more live animals and scientific demonstrations. We want to bring giant gyroscopes, liquid nitrogen, and fire demos to the masses. We want to raise local butterflies and release them in the park. We want to grow our little zoo to include panther chameleons, dart frogs, and leaf bugs. Our goal is that every time a customer visits we hear the words, “I have NEVER seen that before in my life!”

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would definitely take them on a tour of our local Curiosities and Oddities stores!

Learned Lemur has an incredible collection of artifacts and bones (including some human). They also put on wonderful sideshows with strongmen, comedians, and other fantastic circus style performers.

Cronk Art & Curiosities is very witchy, expertly crafted, and a welcoming environment for any spooky patron.

Rocky Mountain Punk has an eclectic mix of natural art, vintage records, and clothing that you literally cannot find anywhere else.

For lunch, we would hit Woody’s Wood-Fired Pizza for the best buffet in town, and in the evening we would retire to Golden City Brewery for a local craft beer (my favorite is the Evolution IPA!)

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My parents deserve the biggest shout-out. They fostered my sense of curiosity from an early age. My dad is a physicist and an engineer and my mom was a librarian. Together my parents taught me to chase my curiosity. They taught me to ask lots of questions and read lots of books and how to examine the world we live in. They taught me that the more you know about the world around you, the more beauty you can see in it. As an example, I was pumping gas the other day, and as I was standing there I noticed an oil slick floating on a puddle. It was stunning, this shimmering swirling rainbow, dancing just for me in this dirty parking lot. It made me smile. It reminded me of a childhood memory when dad taught me that oil slicks are incredibly thin, sometimes only a few molecules thick, a fact that blew my little kid brain. As I got older I learned more. I learned that oil slicks are so thin that they produce an effect called “thin-film interference.” When light waves strike an oil slick, they reflect back off of both the top and bottom of the oil slick. These light waves then interfere with each other, reinforcing or canceling out select parts of waves creating the different colors we see. The exact same quantum mechanical processes that create the rainbow in the oil slick teach scientists about quantum computing, teleportation, even the origins of the big bang and the very universe itself. Everything is connected, and it’s beautiful. My parents taught me that. They also provided me with guidance and support. They are my sounding board for every crazy idea I have. They were the first ones I told I wanted to start my own business. And they were the first ones to tell me they believed I could succeed. They have been there for every success and every failure. And they continue to be there for me to this day. I would not have had the foundation, concept, determination, or ability to start The Golden Curiosity Shop without their unwavering support.

I would like to give a shout-out to my store manager, Tori Bowman. Tori started at the Golden Curiosity Shop last February and has been instrumental in our success. She is creative, kind, great with the customers and full of ideas that are going to help propel the Golden Curiosity Shop to the next level. I absolutely could not do it without her support.

Website: https://www.GoldenCuriosityShop.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goldencuriosityshop/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGoldenCuriosityShop/

Yelp: https://www.facebook.com/TheGoldenCuriosityShop/

Other: https://www.tiktok.com/place/The-Golden-Curiosity-Shop-21568226274807330