[RegularOpossum]

My cousin brought over his five year old recently and I showed the kid my small fossil collection. They thought I must have been rich but the most expensive piece was $50 and even then I knew I was over paying for it. I'm working on having one fossil from every geologic period.

[elango]

my kid is a shark lover and would love to gift him one, any idea on where to buy and how to validate if it is original, thanks

[valianteffort]

Buy them on ebay. They are extremely common and probably not worth faking I'd guess. Just look for a reputable seller based out of the east coast.

[RegularOpossum]

As others have said, ebay is great as there are a lot of good fossil dealers. I personally got mine at a flea market, and talked the seller down to $20 for something he probably just picked up off the ground.

[foo-bar-bat]

Suggestions?

Fast-following you sounds good!

[RegularOpossum]

You're not building a museum so fractional specimens are the way to good. Teeth are a great place to start, they're ridiculously common (so affordable) and often of very little paleontological significance at this point (incredibly common). For fossil bones there, stuff like piece of Hadrosaurs that are again, so common they're of little significance.

For rounding out my collection of all the periods, I'm looking at fish and aquatic animals like trilobites.