While back, I received an email from an opal miner at Cooper PD asking me if I wanted to buy this 160 karat chunk of rough opal. It had beautiful colors in every color - red, green, blue, yellow. He had rubbed the top of it off and you could see the color from the top, despite the poach around the edges. However, there was a thick layer of pots on the back, so I was uncertain about how much of it was really usable opal. Is it worth the risk or reward? The side I saw was a disaster, mostly Potch with some holes in it. This side looked like a minefield with sand and pits and discoloration, and almost no colorful opal. So, the question remained - should I buy it or not? In the end, based on the extreme beauty I saw on one side, I decided to buy it. The edges were dark, but this side would look great in photographs. He may have embellished it a bit, but it was mostly true. The stone had central areas with a lot of blue at the edges. There was sand and darker areas that were peculiar to me. The back side was terrible, but after smoothing it, I saw the same pot and defects as before. I worked on it further, grinding and removing the sand, and a little bit of red started showing through at the edge in the darker area. I still had to grind it down a little further to remove more pot. I started putting a little bit of curvature on the surface to make it look better. The front of the stone had a nice large area to make a beautiful opal, while the back had mostly pot with a small area of...
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