why did you put that out if you didn't want to talk about it oh it was just
part of the box so it just was sitting there i don't know why
you got a bit of crumb
g'day and welcome to black opal direct my name is justin well this is tamika hello
g'day and welcome to black opal direct my name is justin and this is tamika well today we're going
to go through some more stones from my collection that i've never shown you before and a couple from
the website that i think are really just such top gems that they deserve to be in a collection
as well so um and a couple little myths that we're gonna bust yeah it's a whole other show
copyrights
and so we're gonna go through a few a few stones in the collection and you will find out that i am
a little bit partial to crystals just top gem crystals there's there's all sorts of crystals
but when you get a lightning ridge or some of those top gems that come from um some of those
better fields i just get weak at the knees so um so which one should we start with um i believe
this one yeah we can start with that one so this one is quite special actually we um
we were in tucson in february and i haven't seen an andamooka crystal for
good three or four years but of this quality many more years this is just an amazing gem and it was
in another vendor's booth and i just decided that it was so beautiful that i had to buy it
when i didn't even ask for a discount i just went okay oh it's mine and what a beautiful
jam it has flagstone and chaff and that 3d color on color and the thing about crystal
from under mercury is it's very rare to get that really clear sort of crystal type of vandermukka
that is not milky and this is one of those gems it's just so special i love it and being a larger
size makes it even more rare too so um very happy about that do you purposely go on the hunt
for pieces for your own collection um i do i do i have um i have another one you'll see a little bit
that i did buy from another vendor as well that i do i am on the search on the hunt for
some pretty top gems and when i find them i do put them away yeah i can't help myself i love
opal so much that you know it just it's just got to be done it must be a nice experience
being the buyer of something that you're going to keep rather than being the buyer or something that
you're going to sell sell pass on yeah it is it's actually quite it's quite nice yeah absolutely
that that i've said you know what i'm going to buy that for myself yeah and when i do go
to tucson i usually do go looking around for something quite special and unique
and it used to be i used to buy these beautiful um damascus knives off a vendor who's a
guy from the steep south and he's he's as bushy as it gets and he pulls out these amazing beautifully
patterned knives but um this time it was that crisp what a difference or a different
yeah slightly different jam not quite as sharp yeah not quite as threatening not like my iq
that's more like my iq actually it's very blunt not sure it's sparkly and clear
not dense dancing thick doesn't make sense today we'll roll with that let's keep going let's pick
another stone okay let's go from one that's part of our online collection yeah okay so this one
is on our website and it's a cushion cut but when i got it it was this funny trapezoid sort of shape
it was really weird nice color and it was spread well but i think i thought it would look much
nicer and more pleasing if it was a symmetrical shape and i'm partial to symmetrical shapes ovals
and cushion cuts so i decided to cut this one into a not an oval and not quite a cushion cut
it's like a hybrid a rounded cushion cut or a uh what do you call it a cushion
stupid anyway because the gems so beautiful it's got that gorgeous
flagstone and and um uh what's the other one um
with that 3d color on color it's super rare and this is my two favorite patterns together
and this piece is perfect for a ring stone absolutely perfect so yeah that's a beautiful gem
that i do have a customer lined up for it's he's looking for a ring stone and um this one
will be perfect for him he doesn't know it's here yet because i'm bringing it to him
in denver when we come there in september so it's going to be pretty special he was looking for a
stone exactly like this i feel like that one in particular has had a lot of attention yeah it has
had a lot of as well anyway i mean it's a 25 000 stone it's a beautiful gem and you you don't get
green blue no any better than that it just it doesn't get better it's so beautiful and it's got
so much life to it yeah very happy with that one pretty special okay this guy from your oh okay so
this one we've made a video out of actually on the website and it's a cross pattern or star pattern
um opal crystal opal and that is so rare so i've decided to keep it because i don't think i'll ever
see another one again like it but it's got that beautiful as you can see when you look closely
it's got that beautiful cross going right through the stone and as you move it around the cross
moves around as well with it pretty amazing stone i've only seen probably another two that have in
this world in the planet that have that type of pattern so it is a super rare type of gem and
um i've seen one cross pattern from perth one of my followers sent me a video saying i've got one
and i was pretty impressed with it had a beautiful cross pattern like that and as you move it around
the cross moves with the pattern crystal or was it black this is black this is a crystal yeah so yeah
it's um very rare type of opal so that's why that one ended up in my collection very good okay well
this guy i'm sure no one has seen it heard anything about it yes so this is the beautiful
gem that was underneath my father's house that he lived in in lightning ridge in 1961
um and it was only found two years ago so there is a rumor going around about this beautiful gem that
when we were in tucson this year that we sold it for a lot of money and it's a rumor and it's not
true because we haven't sold it it's still here and i'm still very happy to own it because i've
never ever seen a stone a gemstone or a black opal quite like this one it really is the most amazing
gem i've seen and i've shown it to other opal dealers that have been in the industry even longer
than me and they've even said i've never seen anything quite like it so that really light movie
blue and the deep red combination just doesn't really exist in opal but it does in this one so
this is a pretty special piece yeah and it has a lot of sentimentality because of the fact that
it was pretty much under where my dad lived um in lightning ridge when he was when he moved there
in 61 and uh his mining partner or friend good friend found it only a couple of years ago so yeah
pretty special i love that stone yeah just that you end up with it really yeah is what makes it
even more of a rare fine it's so sentimental to me i love it um because my dad and i when we
were when we did business together we were always searching for the ultimate gym and we never saw
anything quite like that and the whole probably 20 years that i worked with him we still we never saw
a story like that and i was growing up as a kid from like eight years old going to lightning ridge
even younger actually um but i was seeing his the opal he was working with and i never saw anything
nothing like it no it's yeah i wish he could have seen it yeah he would have been very happy
yeah that baby it'll be a sad day that ever goes yes he will be all right that guy ha so this is
another gem and the only um there's only two of them but i found this one in a vendor in tucson
as well now i can see very clearly that this is a lightning ridge knobby crystal opal and the reason
i bought it is because it has some beautiful pinks in it and crystal opal is quite rare to have
real gem pink color in it and this one does so i decided to keep that one well i decided
to buy it first and then keep it and i paid quite a lot of money for that stone
very very happy to own it though because i don't think we'll see many more of them
come going forward very bright they're all so clear yeah so every every crystal that i
keep is always going to be clear and crispy and yeah it's going to have that 3d color on color
you don't want a flat stone if you're going to collect i reckon you need a bit of depth
my favorite
somebody's partial to to pin fire pattern so this is a stone that is on the website it's um
it was in one of our lives on youtube and i polished this with a lot of you people watching
on and i really enjoyed that day actually it's quite fun and it is a 55 000 gym and um
it was it was quite nice to polish it up seeing um seeing all those beautiful pin fire come out and
pin fire is quite rare and usually doesn't last long when i'm put a beautiful pin fire up for sale
in history like in the past i haven't seen many last long at all they just somebody buys it pretty
quickly that being said that's a little bit bigger stone a little bit larger so you know it takes the
right type of person to want to own a stone as special and as large as that one because that's
15 carats so yeah it's quite quite a big gem it's incredible just the color and the pattern
goes right to the edge like across the whole face yeah it's really even really even really
even right across yeah and that's quite rare a lot of color quite rare in a gem like that
and that is knobby opal too yeah it's amazing i'm not sure if anyone notices how much pin
fire goes across the social media media post but it's because they're my favorite sorry
um okay all right so this one here this one is a crystal that is it's from a miner that
has now passed away he's a good friend of mine and it's got a lot of sentimental value to it
and while it is an absolute cracking green neon crystal like it's really really bright
it's got that 3d color on color it also has a lot of memory about it that i i do remember
my friend and every time i look at it i think of the field that he worked at and um it just
it just hasn't i have an attachment to it to a connection to him and this is the thing about
opals is if you get a handed down opal from say your grandmother or your mom or dad or whatever
and you have that memory of that person so this opal now has more than just its own beauty it
has provenance it has has a history and you grow a connection to that stone and that's that's what
makes me collect stones because one day my son might have a collection or he might you know i'll
pass away and he'll he'll see stories in these stones that he'll pass on to his children as well
and it is really important and i think um stories about these stones just help grow
yeah the love for them yeah it's for sure i think that's you know the undercurrent to any kind of
collection is that they're not necessarily incredibly beautiful or um you know worth
of a high value there's just sentiment yeah in the pieces yeah so i do i do get emails from people
all the time saying i've got this stone it was my grandma's and i love it so much and it's really
not worth a lot of money but the sentimentality around it means that you need to take care of it
and cherish it because it's not about money anymore it really isn't but there you go that
guy oh this one here yeah this is a crystal that um i don't know whether it really belongs in my
collection because it's probably the black shape of the group it's not quite as high
quality it's still got that beautiful 3d color on color and it's quite crystally and i love it
but you know i just probably had a weak moment i thought you know what i want to keep that one too
and it's because i'm so partial to crystals i really love crystals so much that um
yeah it just ended up there and i haven't taken it out it's remained it's a nice green blue yeah
it's beautiful yeah yeah yeah and then this little fella down here so when i was a kid my father was
looking for a big chunk of potch and i'm talking like he wanted a brick size so we couldn't really
find too much that was the size of a brick but he did find something about the half size of a
brick and over months he carved this and this is a green tree frog replica but it's in potch or opal
it's all solid silica opal but just has no play of color so it's called potch and this little froggy
he's incredible he's done such a beautiful job and i remember when he was carving out whether
he was he was deciding whether to make it a shiny surface or a matte surface or you know because
frogs frogs don't necessarily shiny but they're um they do have kind of a matte skin depending
on their wet or their yeah whatever but they do have a bit of glistening natural glistening skin
yeah so he decided not to fully polish it shiny so it looked as close to a frog as possible and
then he decided to put two little beautiful gem eyes in them and um yeah i cherish this so much
i mean when my dad passed away this is the thing i really want to keep because i just remember
growing up watching him carve this and many other things at the same time but he carved this
and this one meant the most so i'm very excited somebody asked me to show this online um not long
ago so i thought maybe it's time to show it off that's a true passion of someone that just loves
what they do yeah that's that's true artistry and that's way beyond my capability of using a dremel
way beyond i can i could cover blob oval i don't even know if i could carve with a dremel and oval
i can do it on those machines but a dremel i'm not sure
yeah i've seen some people do it with a dremel and they're pretty talented a specimen
exactly exactly well that's about it for us today yeah that was fun i hope you enjoyed that there's
there's we haven't really talked about values on these stones but it's more about you know what you
like to collect and i really love to collect these gems now i've got another bag of them a whole
bunch of stones which you've seen in other videos that i've shown before and there's black opals and
you know perfect red on blacks in there as well but i thought i'd share with you most of the other
stones that i've recently acquired and um crystals that i just am so passionate about and some of the
stones that are on the website, yeah and i like to have that myth busted about that because so many
people thought it was sold and no it's not sold still here i hope you enjoy that guys and um yeah
leave it leave a comment tell us which one you like the most yeah and we'll see you next time bye
still recording by the way
you