Boulder Opal on Ironstone (ex David Burgess Collection)

Item Description

Boulder Opal is highly popular with mineral, gem and jewelry collectors. The best of this material comes from Australia which has been the prolific producer of fine quality Opals in the world for decades. Here we have a wonderful miniature display specimen which features a beautiful patch of electric blue, green and indigo / purple Opal which are sitting on ironstone rock matrix. The dazzling color of the Opal against the dark background makes for a great contrast. We showed the piece to a friend who knows a bit more about this material than us, and we were told that good Boulder Opals can fetch over $500 per carat in some cases for good gem material. This particular piece would be valued at a few hundred dollars or more based on the rough. Don't miss out on this beautiful specimen of a species that most collectors don't often think about for their collections as it is rarely found in display pieces. From the worldwide collection of David Burgess (1951-2016). David was a prolific species collector from Newington, Connecticut, and the namesake for the extremely rare cobalt arsenate species Burgessite, which he discovered.