Black Opal - simply spectacular

 Opals and opal jewelry have been adored since ancient times. Pliny of Rome often speaks of the magnificence of opals, and later the great William Shakespeare also spoke of them. They were talking about opals, and at that time the Australian black opal had not even been found. But today, black opal is a symbol of beauty in nature.

When people around the world talk about the magnificence of opal, they almost always talk about Australian black opal.

What are we talking about when we mean black opal? Without discussing crystal structures and all that gemological jargon, let's just think about how it compares to other types. If you look at black opal, you will see that it has a black or very dark base. It's like having a glass of black paint. That's the black base I'm talking about.

Then you insert some light colored pieces of plastic. Let's say you put in a little blue and a little red and a little yellow. Now let's talk about color. Let's say you put only blue and green into the black mix. In opalspeak, we'd call it blue/green on black. If green was the dominant color, we would change it and call it green/blue opal  to black opal.

So is there one color in the black opal range that is the best and most expensive? Yes, yes and definitely yes! When my mining partner told me on the phone that he found some red on black today, I just said Oh my God! That meant we had some money.

This is the top end of the opal market, red on black and sourced from almost the only place on earth, the Lightning Ridge region of NSW, Australia. But any color on black is likely to bring big bucks! As the black base lightens, we begin to decide if we can still call it black. A dark gray opal stone will still often be called black, but as it lightens, we say it's blue on gray, for example, and when the gray and blue start to mix, we say it's blue/grey.