Calibrated opal have been around for many years and many opal had come out of Coober Pedy in the early days with so much white opal coming out of the ground. The abundance of opal was enough to make calibrated stone in large amounts for mass production.
Lightning Ridge in the 1990’s to 2000s was also a mass producer opal blue opal that was passed through a calibrating machine to make blue opal beads. These beads where strung together to make beautiful necklaces and sold for large amounts of money.
Because of the color of the blue opal it was the most inexpensive type of opal from Lightning Ridge to cut into calibrated sizes. The blue opal has now become more scares and prices are too high to make into beads from a machine.
Hand polishing blue opal into beads is a more labor-intensive way to make a bead and can be very difficult to make a perfect round shape with the human eye and skill. I have made many opal beads in the past with large opal nobbies and hand polishing them. Even though it if fun to make them the time it takes can be not worth your while to do.
Blue opal beads from Lightning Ridge can come in every bodytone from a very light milky blue to a black opal N1 B5 color and body tone. All of which, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The beads can be made up to about 12mm in circumference and finding pieces of that size can take many years to fill a necklace with the similar color beads. Thus making the opal necklace a very rare commodity in todays opal network.
If a person was to make some opal beads out of red colored opal the price of the beads would be ten fold in value. This type of opal is not worth cutting to opal beads or calibrating as much gem color and value would be lost in the polishing process.
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