Custom Car, Motorcycle, Watercraft Appraisals in Pala

If you are like us, you love your car. You have probably spent countless hours and dollars making it everything you have always dreamed of. We, like you, enjoy being around car people, and more importantly cars themselves.

Although car people love to spend time and money on their cars, they all too often forget to properly value their car for insurance purposes. Dollar after dollar goes in, but never gets properly documented so that if a catastrophic event strikes, the real cost of putting the car back together gets paid by the insurance company. As collector car owners ourselves, we understand the importance of our product first hand. Fill out the form on the right to get started on your on-site Pala car appraisal.

Serving Pala

Facts about Pala

Pala is a small, mostly Native American, community located in the Pala Indian Reservation, located within San Diego County, California near Fallbrook. For centuries a traditional gathering place of native peoples, it was selected in the early 19th century by Spanish Franciscan missionaries as the site of a mission to serve the Native Americans.

The community is east of Carlsbad in the San Diego-Carlsbad metro area. In the National Geographic Names Database, it is officially catalogued as feature number 1661174. The community is in ZIP Code 92059, and inside area code 760.

The community name may be derived from the Native American Cupeño or Luiseño language term pal, meaning "water." Another possible origin of the name is the Spanish word pala, which means "shovel."

Mineral resources

"Green Cap" tourmaline from the Tourmaline Queen mine near Pala After United States annexation of California following its victory in the Mexican-American War, Pala became known for its mineral resources, including gold and tourmaline. Numerous gem mines were established in 1890s, of which more than twenty are listed in the Mindat database. Gem mines in the Pala District still produce tourmaline, with the pink variety as the regional specialty.

China's Dowager Empress Cixi of Qing Dynasty highly prized the pink tourmaline mined in Pala. Under her influence, China's demand for this gem created a boom in the California tourmaline industry after 1902, particularly at the Himalaya mine. Demand fell off about 1911, declining after the Empress died in 1908.

Pala was the site where morganite beryl was first discovered. In 1902 it was found to have the first commercially significant deposit of kunzite, named after George F. Kunz, the godfather of gemology.