Opal Appreciation Thread

Opals have kinda been a family thing for a long time. My grandfather used to travel the world to mine opals. He had a large collection of opals he mined and cut from Australia back in the day.. unfortunately due to the Florida heat and well.. time, they lost a good chunk of their value. When he passed away his opals were found and split up between the family, in which I managed to obtain a few of his.. still lookin' for his foot-pumped lap wheel he owned.

I seem to have caught his fever for opals, you pull an opal out in front of me and I go digging for trade goods. Earlier in this year, while in Quartzsite I managed to score a beautiful large chunk of fire opal, which I'm currently working on grinding down the face to expose the near half-inch thick face of fire. I soon as the man pulled it from his bag I was throwing all sorts of stuff at him for it. Kinda my investment for the year..

Below is the set of opals I obtained from my grandfather. A set of white, black and green. The picture is crappy, bad sunlight... but there is still fire in all three opals. The white opal has flakes of green/orange fire, green still has a nice sheen across it, and the black opal has orange/blue flakes along the layered crevices. One of my copper wire works..

I was told by an indian that it was bad luck to give opals to a loved one.. good for me I guess.. since I tend to hoard them.

yeah.. horribly bad picture

 

so beautiful! opal is definetly as beautiful if not more so, in its raw form. love it! lapidary is a new hobby of mine

 

Won't lie, maybe it's just me but I seriously misread the title

sex on the brain I suppose

But for whatever reason, I am here- and I would like to say that I to do like opal. Very pretty.

 

Opals are my favorite gem. I suppose it is bad luck since my relationship has kinda gone downhill ever since I got a ring, but whatever. Still purdy.

 

Dude... you have about $400k worth of opal there. Easy!