Diane and I along with a 3rd partner David started our retail shop named New Spirit Crystal Gallery on June 1st 1990.

The shop was located in Shorewood Wisconsin from 1990 through 2004. We moved it to the city of South Milwaukee for one
year and finally decided we had enough of the cold snowy midwest winters and moved to Sun City Arizona in May 2005.

We briefly ran a retail shop in Scottsdale Az and did weekend shows in Goodyear Az until March 2007 .

Our first website began in early 1995 and we have been online since then.

Beginning in March 2007 our total focus is devoted to our website and our wonderful internet customers .

Mike's story:
In 1989 I traveled the 5 hours it took to get to my brothers home in Goshen Indiana for a weekend of golf. As it turned out when I arrived it was raining way too hard to do any golfing that  day so my brother suggested that we go to a rock and mineral show that was on that weekend.

As soon as we got in the hall, and the first glimmer of cut gemstones reached my eyes, I was hooked. I know right then and there what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. At first as we strolled through the rows of dealers, I figured I wanted to learn how to cut and polish the crystals and turn them into valuable finished gemstones, but half way through the show I saw one particular booth that attracted much more commotion that any of the others.

That booth was operated by a guy making jewelry for folks right then and there at the show. I found out that he was doing "Wire Wrapping". And it looked like most of the women in attendance were two deep all the way around his booth. That erased any second thoughts I may have had about my next adventure in life. I needed to learn how to do that wire wrapping and learn it as fast as possible.

My brother was also smitten by the craft and we bought a few video tapes and set about learning the craft. After a couple of months I had managed to have some success and accumulated some inventory and went to sell it to a friend (Diane my future wife) who worked for a guy that had these carts in the middle of several local malls. Well Diane tried to get her boss to look at and try a few pieces at the cart where she worked, but he never bothered to look at any of the pieces and Diane suggested we open our own shop. And so we did along with her ex David, in Shorewood Wi on June 1 1990,
the rest is history.

Diane's story:
Diane isn't much of a computer person so I'll add some of her story here from what she has told me through the years.
She has said she was always a jewelry nut even as a young girl, always trying on jewelry of her mother and older sister. When she got an allowance she would make a bee-line to the 5 and dime store and by as many plastic or rhinestone rings as she could until her money was gone.
Needless to say she has always favored jewelry of all kinds and she really liked her job working the cart owner and ended up spending a lot of her salary buying pieces she sold off the cart.

There was one particular thing Diane noticed over the time she spent working at the cart about some of the crystals she sold. The cart owner stocked both lead glass crystal Swarovski jewelry and natural quartz crystal jewelry. She would notice that every once in a while a customer would almost stop walking dead in their track as they passed her cart and come over and buy one of the natural crystal pendants. It was as if they were drawn over to the cart by some mysterious energy field to buy the piece.

After witnessing this play out every week several times a week, Diane wanted to learn if there was a why to this phenomena, so she went to the local library and finally found some old books about the folk lore of gemstones. She read all she could find at that time and used her new knowledge to help her crystal buyers understand why they became drawn to a certain crystal. She continued her gem and crystal education to this day. She is always happy to help our internet customers with crystal healing / energy questions.

Even after our move to Arizona she still takes time whenever called on by our old Milwaukee customers to help them find the perfect gem or crystal for what they are working on at the time.

Diane and Mike McKnight ready to serve your jewelry and gift needs

The Crystal Ball LLC
mail - returns
9839 W. Bell Rd.
Sun City, AZ 85351
local phone 480-614-5365
toll free order line 866-346-1035
email here

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See our shipping policy click here

Remembering our old South Milwaukee store front 2004


Our old Shorewood WI shop about 1990 or 1991

SEE WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS SAY ABOUT OUR FAST FRIENDLY SERVICE HERE (customer comments)