QuestionRod, I am a hobby cutter and have cut a couple of nice red multi color(red, green, yellow, purple) chocolate crystal opals from Ethiopia. They are quite bright with rolling flash fire. I am wondering what the current retail valuation levels are on these stones. I have seen all of the other valuations for black and black crystal, but am wondering if the chocolate opals are valued the same? Thanks, Mike
AnswerHi Michael,
thanks for your question and seasons greetings to you .
I have seen a few pieces of Ethiopian chocolate opal , interesting stuff.
They can have some fire and flash.I have no info on the current value for them.
Ethiopian Opal is not traded much within opal circles worldwide. The trouble is that a lot is unstable, much like Virgin Valley Nevada opal is pretty but extremely unstable. Brazilian Opal and Mexican opal suffer from sometimes from too much water content in the opal and depth of where it comes from (mines).Except that Mexican Opal has a market and is recognised as a producer of gem quality. While there is consistent high quality opal coming from Australia , other types will not be so competitive. In saying so, I was in Java Indonesia last year and visited Borobudur temple, on the way there I saw an opal store , so I went in to see what they have, it too is a chocolaty , tea coloured stone that does have some nice colour from time to time. They ask plenty for their pieces, probably because the high quality stuff is rare.But I believe it was too expensive compared with "sound" bright boulder opal from Aust. Even bright clean opal fom Coober Pedy is in most cases a much safer bet. I would be most concerned putting any Ethio-Opal into the safe for some time as Ive seen great pieces of opal from suspect areas crack infront of my eyes. Even the very first opal from Hungary was brought up in stages from the deep to let it acclimatise under differing pressure and water saturated but was a very poor cousin when Australian opal was found.The best you could do is use Lightning Ridge black opal as a guide as the best of it is the most expensive and beautiful opal on the planet,and hard to be bettered...although the strength of the stone and variation in pattern and shapes with high quality Queensland Boulder opal is just for me the most beautiful natural opal gemstone and fabulous for designers..Some Black opal has to be carefully handled as it can be from a particular area that may be slightly unstable. Black opal,red on black from Lightning ridge can easily exceed $5k per carat when its clean and bright on a strong black b/g.but most opal is not red on black and xtra gem grade. As far as valuing it the same it would be difficult to see it being the same value as L.Ridge. Opal values vary greatly ,I think it was Harry Winston who said it was the hardest to value and diamond the easiest.When you find someone who loves the stone you are selling , really at the end of the day ,it is only worth as much as the buyer is prepared to pay above a reasonable industry benchmark. Naturally you would want to compare the prices of Australian opal to it .There are many factors to determine how strong and safe it is. As you can see its a difficult question to answer. So I would have to say that as Ethiopia is not a recognised supplier of quantity of gem quality opal, its location would affect its selling price.I know thats a lot of waffling , but I hope you can glean some useful info out of here .best regards Rod
