Australian Opals & Pink Diamonds
Australian Opals
Nature’s chameleon of a thousand colours, the shimmering stone of love and hope. Some say that the opal contains the essence of every other gem instilled into one, the earth’s fireworks, the “Queen of Gems”.
Opal Formation
95% of the world’s opals are found in Australia, in the vast and hostile outback. Water from what was once a vast inland sea seeped down through natural faults in the earth. Rich in silica from the thick layers of sandstone in the area, the water collected in voids and fissures beneath the earth’s surface, many of which were formed from the remains of pre historic land and sea creatures. As the water was absorbed back into the clay, the coloured silica hardened over millions of years to become the precious opals so sought after by generations of miners, captivated by their beauty and the riches that they offer.
Types of Natural Solid Opal
There are three basic types of Australian opal:
White Opals contain a play of colour that emerges from a milky sandstone background in a dazzling display. They are mainly found in South Australia and make up 90 % of Australia’s opal product. The famous Coober Pedy and Mintabie mines are best known for their high quality white opals.
Boulder Opal, a rare and beautiful variety, is mainly found scattered through a 300 kilometre wide belt in south-western Queensland. Naturally attached to the host rock in which it was formed, the colour intensity in boulder opal is without equal. Gaps in ironstone provided the space for this dramatic opal’s formation and it is often favoured by designers for its brilliant colours and free form shape.
Black Opal, the most coveted opal of all, comes from the Lightning Ridge area in north New South Wales. The Black Opal is nature’s presentation stone, its dark body providing a perfect background on which to display its dazzling array of rippling colour changes. Brilliant flashes of vivid colour leap from its black velvet background, making it the rarest and most valuable of opals.
Types of Composite Opal
Doublets or triplets are man made to allow miners to use gem quality stones that are too thin to be sold as gems.
Doublets are a composition of two pieces which are cemented together. Usually a thin piece of opal and a base of potch or colourless opal are used to form designs of unique and lasting beauty.
Triplets are a composition of three pieces. A thin layer of natural opal is cemented between a dark base material and a transparent protective top layer.
Determining Value
As we have seen, the type of opal, Black, Boulder or White, will have a significant effect on its value. After that, in general terms, the larger the stone, the more valuable it is. But when natural or solid opals are graded, the most important features are the fire and colour. The term “play of colour” was created specifically to describe opal’s astonishing kaleidoscope of colours and hues. The most valuable have the strongest fire and the most vivid patterns in the stone. A Red fire is the rarest and therefore the most valuable, then Orange, Yellow, Green, Indigo, Blue and Violet, all of which are still breath-takingly beautiful, but more readily available. Other factors may influence value, like shape for white and black opal and the presence of nature’s hallmarks. Australia’s opal country is as unique as the precious stones that it gives. The Australian desert, the “never never”, is so hostile that people in towns like Coober Pedy live in underground houses. In the main, opals are mined by small operators working 30 metres below the searing temperatures of the desert, burrowing through rock and soil in search of their fortune. Although some mines are open cut, tunnelling is the most common method. Danger is never far away as these colourful Australian characters dig, pick and blast their way underground. Nowhere else could you find a more uniquely Australian industry or people, where stories of great characters and magnificent riches form a unique tapestry of Australian life.
Pink Diamonds
Thousands of kilometres across the vast desert interior of the Great Southern Land lies the timeless and rugged mountain range known as the Kimberleys, a world famous diamond producing area, and home of the rarest and most sought after diamonds of all, The Argyle Pink Diamonds.
Beauty
The Argyle Pink Diamonds are amongst nature’s most beautiful and most valuable creations. Born in the spectacular landscape of the Kimberley region of Western Australia, these exquisite gems possess a colour and energy that is truly breathtaking.
Origin
Diamonds are formed over many millions of years from carbon deep underground. Their crystal forms are carried to the earth’s surface by volcanic eruptions deep within the earth’s crust.Exactly how the Argyle Pink Diamonds came to possess their brilliant pink hue is largely unknown, adding further to their unique mystery and allure. The Indigenous people of Western Australia say that the Argyle mine was formed when a group of women were fishing for a legendary Dreamtime barramundi that escaped the net. The rich supply of astonishing diamonds that so characterises the Argyle, were formed from the scales of the fish as it fled past the women, and their spectacular array of colours come from the different parts of the fish. Argyle’s pink diamonds are from the great fish’s living heart.
Grading
Diamonds are generally graded by the four C’s method of colour, cut, carat and clarity. But with their unique and stunning pink hues, the colour of Argyle Pink Diamonds is paramount and it is the most important factor for grading. They can display different pink hues like Orangey Pink, Pink and Purplish Pink. In each of these categories the more intense, deeper and more vivid the colour, the more rare and more valuable the diamond. As such they are graded as Fancy Light, through Fancy, Fancy Intense, Fancy Deep, Fancy Vivid and Fancy Red.
Extreme Rarity
Such beauty is of course almost impossibly rare and such rarity has a limit. In 2018 the Argyle mine will close forever, exhausted of its stocks of these superb stones. Today, there are probably less than 500 of these “Argyle Tender quality” pink diamonds remaining. Major diamond mines all over the world are now shutting down operations at a steady rate. At Argyle itself, the average annual production has decreased dramatically, while the international demand for Pink Diamonds continues to spiral, ever upwards.
Value
All this of course makes the Argyle Pink Diamonds amongst the most valuable gems in the world, being on average, ten times more valuable than their white diamond counterparts. They are the most highly prized of all rare diamonds, and revered by those who possess them for their stunning beauty, breathtaking hues, incredible rarity and extremely high value. As an investment, Pink Diamonds have been shown to increase an incredible 20 percent in value every year. Imagine the feeling of owning such exquisitely rare beauty …
Portability
Pink diamonds in particular offer a unique form of concentrated and portable wealth. There is no other form of asset which even comes close.
South Sea Pearls
Off the coast of the Kimberley region in the remote far north west of Australia are the richest pearling beds in the world.
For many, the pearl is nature’s delivery of perfection, requiring no cutting or polishing to display its brilliance, lustre and smooth lined beauty. Over time, many people have believed that pearls were moonbeams that fell into the ocean and were swallowed by oysters. Although we know that this is not true, pearls are still synonymous with sensuality, romance and purity.
Pearl Formation
A creation of the pearl oyster, a mollusc whose species has survived 530 million years, natural pearls are extremely rare, the result of an astonishing accident of nature. When an object lodges in the delicate flesh within the oyster’s shell, the oyster isolates it inside a pearl sac that secretes nacre or mother of pearl, the same substance that lines its shell. Over time, usually a few years, it becomes smooth and hard – a pearl, an organic gem, the jewel of the sea.
Cultured Pearls
It took thousands of years to understand nature’s secret. The result, the cultured pearl, is a remarkable marriage, a perfect balance between science and nature, a shared wonder. South Sea pearls are the finest in the world, a product of the larger tropical water oysters such as the gold and silver lipped oysters of the North West shelf. Using a technique refined over decades of experimentation, oysters are seeded with a bead and a small piece of oyster tissue and left to manufacture their precious cargo.
After two to three years the oysters are collected and in a delicate operation, the pearl is removed before the oyster is re-seeded and returned to its cool, clear ocean home.
White South Sea Pearls - Beauty and Virtues
South Sea Pearls come in at least eight different hues, eight different shapes, at least 15 sizes and myriad levels of lustre and surface perfection.
Lustre is the most important factor in grading. The inner glow of the pearl combined with the surface brilliance defines lustre. The greater the lustre, the thicker the nacre and the stronger the glow.
Complexion: South Sea Pearls are organic gems, and may possess the hallmarks of nature which are imperfections in their surface. The fewer surface blemishes, the more valuable the pearl.
Size: 8-14 mm pearls are more plentiful, 15-19 mm pearls are spectacular, and pearls over 20 mm are truly collector’s items.
Colour: Different species of oysters produce a characteristic range of colours, ranging from silver, silver pink, white, white rose, cream, champagne, golden white to the mysterious deep golden colour.
Shape: Because pearls are created organically they can often be different in shape, some perfectly round, others beautifully irregular. Shapes can be classified as round, semi-round, drop, button, baroque, semi-baroque, circle and keshi. Shape can be influenced by where the seed is placed in the oyster.
Types of Pearls
White South Sea Pearls are produced by the “Pinctada Maxima” oyster which lives naturally in the azure waters off the north west coast of Australia. Australian South Sea Pearls are recognized as the best in the world, as the warm, nutrient rich waters of our oceans produce the whitest and most beautifully lustrous pearls. These natural treasures, Australian South Sea Pearls, have set the benchmark for the White South Sea Pearling industry, their size, shape and awesome lustre putting them in a class of their own. Apart from White South Sea Pearls, there are Tahitian, Akoya and Freshwater.
The mystical Tahitian Pearls present naturally stunning, mysterious dark colours and are highly prized because of their rarity. They are grown in lagoons and Atolls of French Polynesia.
Akoya Pearls come from a different species of oyster that produces pearls sized between 3mm to 10mm, with a gleaming white luster and often a beautiful strong pink overtone.
Freshwater Pearls are cultured in lakes from mussels, but although beautiful, are generally not as valuable as sea water pearls. They are grown in mainly Chinese Farms from mussels. A mussel can produce over 20 pearls in one cycle in contrast to South Sea Pearls in which an oyster usually will produce only one pearl. Freshwater pearl sizes vary from 4mm up to 12mm. They range in a series of stunning colours from white, through pink, peach and purple.
