Million Dollar Opal? I Had to Test It First

Well, Saxon and I went on a trip to Lightning Ridge a few weeks ago, and I saw a parcel of opal there that was worth around a million dollars. It was huge, and it was a lot of crystal opal. When I saw this rough opal, my eyes nearly popped out of my head there was that much color. And the color bars were really thick, and I believe that when you cut them, they're gonna really display that nice 3D color on color that I love so much. And there was so much material there, they looked like there was a million bucks worth. But I wasn't really willing to spend a million dollars on a parcel of opal, especially crystal, but nor do I even have a million dollars to spend on that much opal. So I bought a small piece to test it out, a piece just off the side, but with really similar color to the bigger pieces. So I can get a really good idea of how the rest of it might cut. This piece is 18.18 carats as it is. And if we look with the gem torch in there, you can see that the color bar's quite clean right through. I did find a natural crack just there that sits on that corner. So we're gonna have to break that off. Maybe it will break off naturally if I give it some force. Yep, there we go, it's gone. So that was a natural crack with a little bit of dirt inside that mine. So that's all good. All right, let's get the wheel going. Let's just clean up those sides where the color isn't showing as much. Really like that orange-green color. Really pretty stuff. And because I want this to be a crystal, that potch I just took off. So I don't really want any potch on it. So it looks like from that side that the color is absolutely beautiful. So let's take this side off and see if we can get a clear enough crystal to cut some really nice gem or gems out of it. So essentially, I'm going in. And so far, this potch on the top looks really quite clear, which is a bonus. It's a good thing. It takes the cloud away from what the gem could look like or should look like. You can see there's still a haze over the top of it. Now we need to go a little bit further down to get to that color bar. The opal comes from the Mulgurush. It's out of the Garrawin Fields. And I know that that type of opal is really safe and usually good quality. But I'm not totally sure whether it's going to be really crystally crystal or whether it's going to have a little bit of a smoky look to it. And so far, it has a smoky look. It's quite rare that you find crystal opal in the seam opal country that has that real clarity and crispness that a knobby opal does. Really pretty color. Just a little bit smoky. I think because of its shape and it's quite thin down this end and thick up this end, I think I might just take off the end so that I get a little small crystal there. And then I can work on a better dome, more even dome on that side. Let's do that. Slice this little piece off. And it seems to me like there's two color bars inside the piece and the color on the back looks better than what I thought the front could be. I'm just going to shape that up. So far, the colors are really strong and they're displaying that beautiful 3D color on color, but does it have the ability to bring that true crystal over? So quite a pretty little crystal. And now let's get onto this one. See if we can get a clean stone, a double-sided clean stone. It wasn't until now that I realized that there's actually two color bars in the piece and one side is much nicer than the other. Some of the bigger pieces, I also saw that two color bar phenomenon where one was just a little bit more watery than the other. And a watery bar, while maybe more clear, doesn't have the same strength of play of color. It seems like the back that I thought would be not as good is actually better than the front. So we've got a smoky looking crystal on the front and a crisper looking crystal on the back. So I think we're going to turn the stone over and work on making that the front because that's better color. So far, things are looking pretty good. And let's see how it goes with the polish. The Mulga fields are in the Simopal country, 70 kilometers southwest of Lightning Ridge. Along with Sheepyard, Carters, Dijo and many more other fields, all of these only create Simopal and no Nobbyopal. Nobbyopal country starts at a field called Lummus'. A guy called Rodney Lummus found that field and it produced some pretty nice opal, both Seam and Nobby. It's really amazing how the formation can change from ridges that look exactly the same as both Nobby and Seam. But underground, there's something different going on. Nobbyopal, while it is the best in the world and the brightest, and has fetched the highest prices per carat of any other black opal in the world, the Mulga field has created a very close second with sometimes much larger black opals being formed because of its plate formation. And that's something that Nobbyopal can't compete with and that's size. While these gems have beautiful play of color, can I consider them crystal opal? That's the question. I decided to polish the back of the stone so I can get maximum clarity out of this crystal. When you put the Seam crystal opal up against the Nobby crystal opal, you can see the clarity of what a Nobbyopal can produce. The Seam opal, on the other hand, is a little bit more cloudy. I definitely know which one I prefer, but everybody has a preference. Let me know in the comments which one you like the best. Both of them, we can consider crystal opals. They just look different. So we come to the opal score. And the difficulty, I give it one star because it was quite easy to cut. All I had to do is slice and face the color and polish both sides. The return on investment was a one star, really not very good at all. I paid $6,000 for the piece and I'll probably get around about the same back. So no profit made whatsoever. And the BOD score, while it isn't quite as crisp as a crystal opal, it still is a beautiful stone, both of them together, and I scored them with three stars out of five.