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Welcome to Black Opal Direct my name's Justin well today there's something very close to
my heart with this Stone on my last trip to Lightning Ridge I bought this from one of
the last friends of my father in Lightning Ridge one of his best friends who and it was
his stone that he kept for a long time as a nest egg and so he came to me to sell the
stone to me because of my connection with him and my father so enjoy this one it's a
beautiful jam and a beautiful story [Music] before I start I have to take you back in
time back around about nine years ago when my father had just passed away and I can take
you even further back than that to where he begun back in lightning Ridge in 1961.
my father he came to Australia with a friend and they decided whether they'd go to the
gold fields or the open mining fields and they chose the Opel mining fields and ever
since then he's never looked back my father Jurgen became one of the best opal Cutters
on the planet and when it came to rough opal he really knew his stuff he knew how to get
the best out of a gym and then had just gone crazy whichever shape you carved you have
to get all the sand now and make it clean and then it's undulated and then he really
enjoyed teaching people how to cut opal as well and taught me everything I know I'm very
lucky to have been his son he also was a great Storyteller he'd tell us stories of people
like Johnny the snake catcher in lightning Ridge and all sorts of amazing funny things
that happened in the game of opal but one thing he was really good at that was making
friends people loved him from wherever they came from he was always there with open arms
always make a cup of tea or coffee and talk about opal all day long to anyone but if anyone
was doing it tough Jurgen would be the first or one of the first to put his hand up and
say I can help he was a good man all that generosity and Good Will from my father led
us to this Stone this is a gem that was from a really good friend of my father's and I
do get a bit choked up about this because this gem means so much [Music]
one of the most unique and amazing things about a gemstone is where it comes from and
its background
it's sentiment it's where all of its history has been in the past and where it's going
to go and the awesome part about this amazing gemstone is that I get to cut it I get to
keep it and put it in my collection forever to give to my son who can live through the
same stories and so on and so on and that's what makes gemstones so sentimental and sometimes
they don't have to be worth anything it's about the history of where they've been and
who owned it and that's what means so much to me this just happens to be an amazing gem
but it wouldn't have mattered my father passed away nine years ago I still get little messages
from little things that happen in life like this gemstone that's just letting me know
that he's okay and that he's watching over me and I feel really really blessed that he
is sending little messages like that you know a year after he passed away as a great story
I had his Leatherman with his name engraved in it and my son of about seven years old
said to me dad can I borrow your dad's Leatherman I promise I'll look after it and I felt really
sad about or apprehensive about giving it to my son but anyway I let him have it my
son took it down to a creek and he was mucking around he put it in the top pocket of his
shirt and came back without it he came back in tears and he said that I'm really really
sorry but I lost Poppy's Leatherman and I was so upset I was really upset and two days
later one of my friends went down to the creek for a bit of a swim and was sitting on the
Rapids in the rocks and he sat on something quite hard which he thought was a rock but
anyway he put his hand down and he picked up my dad's Leatherman he came running up
to the edge of the creek where I was still there and said look what I found and I burst
into tears and I realized it was a message from my dad saying I'm here son I'm okay and
I'm watching over you well this opal feels exactly the same way and while it is a forty
to fifty thousand dollar beautiful gem it has more sentiment than it has value so enjoy
the process while I'm cutting this enjoy the feeling that it's giving me the joy of being
able to polish this beautiful gem
by the way the opal comes from a field called Allawah it's a newer field in Lightning Ridge
out of all the old fields and it's a knobby opal
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thank you
[Applause] you know I've bought many stones from this opal Miner over the years and it
seems to me that this is going to be the last one I ever buy from him as he has pretty much
given up mining as he's getting a bit old now the body's not quite working the way it
was and you know how it goes and it's quite sad to see that it's at the end of an era
but the memories will live on in this gym for the rest of my life and my son's life
as I will tell him stories and carry them through
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but hey what an honor to cut a gem like this to be able to bring it to its best it can
be and I might even put this one in a pendant for my son's possible future wife so that
they can make memories that can live on in the Stone for more Generations to make it
a real heirloom when a gemstone becomes an heirloom becomes history
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so um I hope you enjoyed that and see you next time thanks for watching bye