Buying opal rough and off cut stones.
Buying opal rough from the miner, most removed whatever stones he has a market for and sells them. With off cuts you can usually tell what you are going to be able to cut, you must watch for cracks in the stones because once a crack becomes obvious a stone can lose half its value.
Opal rough gemstones.
Buying opal rough, uncut on the internet buy samples first if possible, the rough image photo is about $6000.00 to 5,000.00 dollars of rough Australian lightning Ridge stones.
If some of the rough is faced it makes the rough parcel far less risk. If you’re buying on the mining fields try to find clues in the rough parcel. Most rough is sold wet so you can see the colors as they will be when they are polished,this is standard practice.
Buying opal rough.
I’ve made up a couple of parcels I found in the mine one day, I sold one parcel and the parcel you are looking at now I decided to cut. I was hoping to do better the large green blue stone in the photo below is what I retrieved out of the very large rough in the image above, unfortunately I was not as happy as I thought it was cleaner no black in the face of the green color and I was hoping for a more vibrant pattern, like Amazon pattern and possibly other multicolors would appear deeper in the rough, the large stone on a private sale about $10,000.00 so you get your money back and make a little bit and the rest of the smaller stones a few more dollars, not a parcel that I would invest in with hindsight.
Big opal gemstones.
Buying opal rough.
However it pays to wipe a few bits dry as this will show up any crazing or cracks often caused from contact with jack hammers or bulldozers etc ! Faced pieces will show up the general character of the whole parcel usually. Miners don’t mind you taking a good close look at their product, but if you find something you don’t like be discreet. Never knock or rubbish some ones opal .They’ve probably worked really hard for it and they won’t like unkind comments Color is the primary criteria for grading, but the graders also take into consideration the number of imperfections and faults, and whether a stone is the right shape to be cut into an oval or one of the other popular shapes.
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