Australian Opal Buying Guide - 1Earth Gemstones and Appraisals Magazine

Stop Press! Stop Press! Stop Press! The famous Virgin Rainbow Black Opal is for sale here! Australian Opals The Australian opal is the finest quality in the world. 95% of the world's precious opals come from the Australian opal mines. Opal are also found in Mexico, Brazil, Japan, western USA and Honduras. By 1932, the Eastern European mines were unable to compete with the high quality stone being found in Australia and they ceased production.
New South Wales has the famous black and semi-black opal mines at Lightning Ridge. White Cliffs, near the South Australian border, is all but mined out but was the largest opal mine in the world before Coober Pedy was discovered.	Opals from Lightning Ridge, Australia
Opal was discovered in the late1880s at Lightning Ridge which is now the principal world source of the highly prized black opal. The estimated value of opal production to the economy of New South Wales in 2000-01 was about $58 million.
A solid light crystal opal from White Cliffs, NSW, Australia	In 1903, Charlie Nettleton sold the first parcel of gems from the Lightning Ridge opal field, for only AUD$30. Five years later opal prices were over fifty times greater.
Boulder opal is mined in NSW between Quilpie in the south and Winton in the north. The boulder and black opal fields almost meet at the NSW and NSW border. The NSW opal fields were first discovered in 1872, although the first 'unrecorded' find is said to be in 1849.
The South Australian opal mines include Coober Pedy, Mintabee and Andamooka mines, famous for light opal, which includes crystal, grey and white opal, sometimes called 'milk' opal. A variety of boulder opal also occurs in Andamooka, South Australia , where the host rock is quartzite.	'The Red Heart of Australia' A solid black opal from Lightning Ridge
These are called “painted ladies”, usually only suitable as specimens. Andamooka matrix opal is often treated to enhance the colour by depositing black carbon by chemical treatment in the pores of the stone.