Opal-AN (Hyalite Opal) (new find)

Item Description

This specimen was mined in August of 2018. It comes from the same loclaity as the now well-known "Blood Vessel Opals", but this one doesn't have the intense red iron oxide inclusions. It is rather a specimen of white / colorless "Hyalite" Opal and a really showy one at that. Most of the Opals from this mine are rather dull and ugly, but this piece is a very good quality display specimen. The front / display side is loaded with fairly gemmy (nearly transparent in some cases) white spheres or "balls" of Hyalite sitting on a layer of what I will call Chalcedony matrix. Possibly the most intiguing aspect of the piece is that is glows with an electric green hue under SW UV light. This is seen oftne in Hyalites as many of them display a brilliant fluorescence. Very good quality for the locality, and considering it's quite new and limited, I'm sure you don't have one in your collection. It should be noted that this material was called "Hyalite" Opal for a long time, but now it has been reclassified as Opal-AN with the "A" and "N" referring to its structure.