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Colour is very very important in
Opals. The more colour, the better and more valuable the
stone is. Reds, pink, yellow and orange are harder to find,
and therefore are more expensive. Green, blue and violet are
much more common. Opal is a very soft stone, and it is
quite easy to scratch. It is cut and polished in a rounded
shape, not faceted
like a diamond. It is mined
in a number of countries with Australia producing most of
the best of both black and white opals. People dig up the
opals in certain places in the Australian desert, where it
is so hot and dry, that they actually make houses dug under
the ground, where they are scratching the earth to find
opal. The different patterns in an opal
have names, like Harlequin, Pinfire, Flash, Flame,
Flagstone, Ribbon, Peacock, Rolling Flash and many, many
others. No one pattern is more expensive
than another. It's the amount of colour and its
intensity
that makes one opal better than another.
