What's in Our Catalog

Books & Videos

Our favorite books and videos about opals. We Have a passion about opal books and have one of the best collection of opal books around...well over 50. We also sell a few opal books that meet our high standards

Books & Videos The best books on the subject whether you want to buy, sell, mine, finish. It's all there, right here.

Cabochons

Our cut and finished opal cabochons. All of the Coober Pedy, Mintabie and Andamooka opals were cut by me. You will find that I am a perfectionished when it comes to cabochons. The Lightning Ridge opals were all purchased as cut stones on the L.R. opal field.

Boulder Opal Cabochons Most of these boulder cabochons we purchased directly from Miner/cutters in Australia. Most boulder opal miners do much of their own cutting. There's the odd cabochon that was finished by myself and is so marked in the description.

Customer Gallery Images of finished opals that have been purchased and sent to us by our customers.

Cut Solid Opals Solid opal cabachons.

Triplets Cabachon Triplets description.

Carvings

After taking an opal cutting course in Coober Pedy South Australia, I found myself hooked on the feeling of creating something very unique via carving. It is incredibly rewarding, but requires patience. For about a $300 dollar outlay you can get yourself fitted-out with very good quality carving equipment. My average carving takes from 8-16 hours. But this will improve with proficiency. If your interested in giving carving a try see our "Opal Cutting" section in the menu, for detailed instruction and tips, developed from making LOTS of mistakes. Will Rogers once said there are 3 kinds of men...one who learns by observation, one who learns by reading and the rest have to pee on the elctric fence to find out for themselves. "Yup...it stings like a son-of-a-gun"!

Opal Carvings The opal carvings presnted here are all created by Steve at The Village Smithy Opal. I hope you enjoy viewing these as much as I have enjoyed carving them.

Faceted Opals

These two very large faceted opals were cut by master cutter Bruce White. They are being sold on consignment through our website. Bruce does a lot of cutting and also is the proprietor of "Sierra Gems" which can be contacted directly through this link: http://www.sierragems.cn/About-Us.html

Faceted Fire Opals The opals presented here are faceted from a stable fire opal found in Oregon.

Fluorescent Opal

This is opal without play of color. But it does fluoresce a mix of beautiful and bright colors under black light.

Wyoming Fluorescent Opal Rough opal nodules from the Cedar Rim area of south central Wyoming. These nodules fluoresce a beautiful mix of blue green and pink.

Jewelry

We are now offering a selction of 14 karat gold and 18 karat gold, opal and gemstone jewelry. This jewelry is custom designed and fabricated by The Village Smithy Opals, Inc. We also take custom orders for jewelry on a limited basis. Please call or e-mail for price quotations. For custom ordered jewelry you may pick out a finished cabachon or rough parcel and we will cut a stone to your specifications for your jewelry.

Gold and Gemstones A collection of 14 karat and 18 karat gold and gemstone jewelry designed and fabricated by The Village Smithy Opals.

Opal Jewelry Our collection of 14 karat and 22 karat gold, opal and gemstone jewelry designed and fabricated the The Village Smithy Opals.

Silver Jewelry Silver jewelry custom fabicated by us at the Village Smithy Opals.

Lapis Lazuli

Lapis is a gem material that naturally intensifies and contrasts the fire of opal. This top quality lapis was selected to be used for inlaying opal, insetting opal or opal intarsia. Because of its dark uniform royal blue this Lapis will also make great solid Lapis cabochons.

Rough Lapis Lazuli Lapis is a gem material that naturally intensifies and contrasts the fire of opal. This top quality lapis was selected to be used for inlaying opal, insetting opal or opal intarsia. Because of its dark uniform royal blue this Lapis will also make great solid Lapis cabochons.

Outback Gallery

Photographs from our annual opal buying trips to Australia.

Australian Scenery Our photographs of interesting Australian scenery.

Mining Photos Photographs of mines and mining activities.

Rough Opals

Mined opals direct from the opal miners, but not finished (except slightly ground to better expose some fire).

Andamooka Opal Rough solid opal and BLACK matrix opal (sugar treated) from the historical town of Andamooka.

Belemnites/Fossils Belemnites are fossilized remains of an extinct squid-like animal which existed from the Carboniferous to the Tertiary periods. These cigar shaped "opalized" fossils are found in the Coober Pedy area. Other "opalized" fossils found in the Coober Pedy area are gastropods, bivalves, ammonites and crinoids.

Boulder Opal Splits During our 2006 Australian Buying trip we were lucky to purchase a large parcel of boulder opal splits. These boulder opal pieces are sold per piece and are already trimmed of most excess ironstone.

Coober Pedy Opals Opals from the Coober Pedy area of northern South Australia.

Lambina Opals Opals from the Lambina fields.

Lightning Ridge Opals Opals from the Lightning Ridge area.

Miner's Parcels Miner's parcels are being sold just the way we purchased them on the Australian opalfields. Some have multi-grades (many miners grade their parcels as tops, 2nds, 3rds and so on. The tops are the best of the parcel and the seconds next best down to potch and color grades (being the lowest grade with the highest number). We offer these for the commercial cutters or retailers of rough opals who are willing to purchase opals in large quantity. The prices listed for these parcels are wholesale prices.

Mintabie Opals Opals from the Mintabie fields.

Nevada USA Opal In the 1970's a fee dig site, The Starfire Opal Mine closed. Well, the Starfire Mine was recently purchased and I was privileged to pick up the first years limited production of opal. This isn't from Virgin Valley, rather it's from an area near Gabbs Nevada and is known for it's stability. It occurs in seams in a volcanic basalt matrix that varies from hard to soft. The opal itself has a very desirable sapphire blue base color with typical red/green play-of-color. If you'd like to try something new in the blue range, for your gold jewelry projects, give this opal a try. It's very reasonably priced!

Queensland Boulder Opal In my opinion the brightest opals to come out of Australia are from Queensland. Try an ounce or two of boulder opal and you may find a stunning gem inside the matrix.

Single Stones Single rough opals ready to be turned into a gem.

Sale Items

Overstocked items or material, for whatever reason, has not been selling promptly. Many of these items are 1/2 off of original price.

Rough Opals Rough Opals that have been marked for clearance.

Glossary of Terms

For a complete glossary of terms click here.

Ordering/Shipping

For purchasing, orders, and shipping information click here.

A Note on Opal Images

Many of our parcels are scanned directly on our Epson scanner. A FujiFilm Finepix S7000 camera was used for the balance of our images. The Super Macro feature on the Fuji S7000 is a big plus when photographing cabochons or single stones. No changes were made to color and hue, although contrast and brightness was changed slightly to allow the opal images to more closely match the actual opal as it appears under incandescent light. A big effort is made not to make the opal images look too good. So you can rest assured that your opals look better at home under a good light, then they look on our website!