Mysterious Beautiful Opals

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Opals are one of the most mysterious gemstones on our planet. It has fascinated men since ancient times. Greeks and Romans and even ancient Aztecs admired this gemstone and believed it to have special qualities.

Opal was first recorded back six thousand years ago in Kenya Africa, which is geographically close to opal fields known in Ethiopian today. There are still several theories on how opal is actually formed and it is extremely technical on how opal is formed in different ways around the world. From sedimentary to volcanic types and stretching from Australia to Africa.

Basically opal is formed by silica which seeped through cracks and cavities and over different minerals. The gel solidified over millions of year.

However in virgin valley USA gemmologists believe that boiling water in the volcanic region carried silica and when plants degenerated the silica formed where the vegetation of plant was.

It is still a mystery how Opal forms differently around the planet and scientist and gemmologists are still working to prove their theories. It is so exciting that today Opal is still a bit of a mystery how the colours and shapes and brightness and body tone are formed.

The Opal industry needs more research on how patterns are formed, for example how does the rarest pattern harlequin form in nature.

Why does Opal form as seam or as nobbys at Lighting Ridge as its two distant formations. Seam opal is flat and nobbys are rock like formation with caps or inclusion of opal colour. What mixture of minerals make the splendid opal colours and why are some opals same colour but different brightness.

Each Opal is a mystery in itself and so hard to find two Opals alike.

Yowah Nut Opal Mystery

This opal nut is a real mystery on how it was formed with bar code style graphics.

Ethiopian Mysterious Opals

Mysterious opals are also found in Ethiopia. This has only been a recent opal field and these opals are known as hydrophane opal.

This opal has spectacular patterns that could be called mysterious opals. These patterns are snake, honeycomb, patchwork and broadflash. But the most fascinating ones are Ethiopian opals with mysterious phantom patterns in them.

Mexican Mysterious Opals

Mexican opal is known for its fire opals and brilliant rolling flash of colours. Even the word contra luz Opal is a fascinating name to describe this mysterious Opal way back to its ancient history to the local Aztec Indians that refereed to this Opal as ‘The Bird of Paradise’.

And we also have just found a unique Mexican Opal that has brilliant fire colour but also has rutillated needles inside the Opal. It is really a mystery on how this Opal was formed this way.

Opal is silica and Mexican Opal is volcanic so to have rutilated needles form inside the silica or Opal it needed to have cavities.

Find Your Own Mysterious Opal

With so many different types of Opals listed on Opal Auctions every day you too could own a unique and mysterious Opal. Find your own today.

Black Opal

Boulder Opal

Mexican Fire Opal

Ethiopian Opal

The opals below were collected by the Berta Brothers over 25 years as mystery opals in their collection and were not for sale. The opals were collected in their shop in Sydney and now purchased by Opal plus and added to their collection.

Opals are from Lightning Ridge Australia par one from Tintenbar

Rings black opal 11.40 carats.

It is mystery how rings formed a s secondary deposits and note that the rings do not meet, Mystery as to how was this formed.

Heart shape opal 3.65 carats

Internal sections formed naturally so cutters mad e outside shape to heart and mystery how opal colour separations were formed form black to white to green on grey potch. Mystery how four colours were formed together

Crystal opal 6.70 carats

This opal has two potch infused patterns and also crack in middle, mystery as to what natural force did this to the potch pattern

Cats Eye opal 7.40 carats

Grey potch with thin line colour from mauve to sunset colours

Swirl opal 3.60 carats

Grey potch with pastel green colors on top to multi fire covered by china white porcelain potch

Mixed color black opal 5.40 carats

Berta’s kept this opal as three separate colour separation grey to green to blues

Color Dot opal 1.95 carats

Mystery how Light potch with deep body tone dot of colour?

Tintenbar opal 4.15 carats

Volcanic opal that displays mystery gas bubble hole on both sides of the opal yet solid potch material inside has no hole. Mystery as to how this was formed

Eye opal 6.20 carats

Mystery as to how formed a s looks like gas bubble formed with white potch than green colour was impregnated into the cavity

Swirl opal 3.60 carats

Grey potch with pastel green colors on top to multi fire covered by china white porcelain potch

Honey potch opal 18.15 carats

This is not valuable as only honey potch with no colour but pattern is amazing and mystery how it was formed

Pair koroit opal showing deposit potch and blue color opal formed and solidified,so still mystery has this is formed

Mystery how cross formation was formed and each segment has different pattern

Mexican crystal opal with rare Finger Print pattern. Mexican opals have reputation as fire opal but pattern in this is amazing like finger print.

Septarian Nodule from Lightning Ridge. It is rare to find this Opal formation

Black potch formed with round gas bubble, that was filled with silica and changed to opal over millions years.

Rare Boulder opal formation of silica on ironstone with bright opal colours to ebony china white with transparent window

Black opal formed with sunset fire opal colours and grey bar line running diagonally across the opal.

Crystal opal from Lightning Ridge with numbers 12 clearly visible. Ideal opal for those born in December.

This Black Opal resembles the colors of The Southern Lights. The Aurora Australis is the Southern version of Northern lights and this opal has an amazing ray of lights when moved

The words “LOVE” can be read in this Koroit Opal