1) They have three types of rock: granite, marble, and other stuff.
2) No "granite" rock name is realistic or even descriptive. Its all a bunch of plunk. Delicatus, Seafoam, Gold Blush, Aquamarine (you'd think you were ordering drinks at a fufu bar), and
3) You can't tell what anything costs other than: D, costly; C, more costly; B, expensive; and A, don't even ask—its for the rich and famous.
Every rock dealer is the same. The smaller shops will have 30 granites, 10 marbles, and a couple travertines. The big dogs will have 3-4 times the selection, but you'll see everything the smaller shops have, so just go to the big ones first. They only sell wholesale to certified fabricators: that is, regular customers with resale licenses. Occasionally you can find a supplier/fabricator that stocks a moderately wide (i.e., popular) selection of materials, but this is what you'll also see at Home Depot or Lowes. Nothing wrong and prices are lower, so if you need "granite" to update the kitchen go to those companies and save some bucks.
Now if you're particular about the type of rock (or partner) you want to spend the next 20-30 years with, you better shop around. I think that Nancy and I have looked at counter top materials at least a dozen times, both in Denver and in the Pacific NW. In South Seattle they have 5 big warehouses within a 3 block radius, so its easy to see a 1000 slabs in a day. For us, it came down to Pentel (the big dog) and Michelangelo (the well trained dog). When we went over for this shopping extravaganza, we were sure we'd get soapstone for the main kitchen counter tops (a decision we'd made years ago, reinforced when we saw and played with the Mackey's soapstone in Denver) and some sort of porphyritic (coarse grained) granite. I had liked something called silver seafoam and seafoam silver (two different versions of same), so that is what we focused on. (see, Nancy got to choose the main counter, and I got to have a vote on the island). Well it didn't come out that way.
The soapstone we saw, and it wasn't abundant up here, was not what we wanted. Mottled with little veining (white streaks of quartz), little movement (or fabric) and mostly dark. Then we spotted something called Verde Vermont Antique, which is marketed as a serpentine marble (it can't be both). It is a real serpentine, but polishes like a marble (softer, carbonate rock). Well hells bells, this stuff is beeaauutiful, harder than soapstone, acid resistent, and polishes like real granite.
We only saw it at Michelanglos, and they didn't have samples. So we pressed the salesman, because he said it was resistant to acids (tomatoes, lemons, wine—all as in a regular dinner meal) but was marketed as a marble (fizzes with application of acid!). He called a local fabricator that had bought and cut some Verde Vermont last week and went over to pick up a scrap. The second problem was we couldn't get all the perimeter counters out of a single slab according to Suzie Richerts (Richerts Marble and Granite, Sequim), so we were going to be blessed with about 2/3rds of a slab that would not be used. Sounds like expensive vanity tops, so we decided to make all the kitchen counters out of the same material—Verde Vermont Antique. You can see more about this American quarried rock (fabricated in Italy) at the following site: http://www.marblemodes.com/html/vermont_verde.html. On our next trip, we'll pick out two slabs and plunk down a wheelborrow full of greenbacks.
