Pilgrimage to Tucson: Opal Edition

After almost 35 years of making jewelry, I finally made it to the Tucson Gem Show. The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, held once a year since 1955,  takes over the entire city of Tucson every February.  The convention center is full of gemstone dealers; the GJX building across the street is full of gemstone dealers.  The building on 22nd Street, not at all adjacent to the convention center, is full of gemstone dealers.  Churches and hotels are full of not only gemstone dealers, but dealers of finished jewelry, jewelry making supplies, and tools for metalsmiths.  It is insane!  Rockhound Heaven.

I discovered my interest in attending the event last May, after finishing my Diamonds and Diamond Grading lab class at GIA’s New York campus.  After looking so deeply into colorless gemstones, I was ready for more.  The entire colored gemstone world awaited me.  What was I waiting for?!

Tucson at sunrise. Photo by Donald Teel on Unsplash

I flew into Tucson at midday, meeting up with a few coworkers from my estate buying job. Once they heard I planned to visit Tucson on my own dime, my company generously offered to sweeten my experience by sponsoring my attendance at the 3-day National Association of Jewelry Appraisers Conference.

In my job as an estate buyer, I work with customers interested in selling their unwanted personal property, which means the jewelry I see is at the end of its life cycle.  The offers I make are based on what we call “parts and pieces,” for a “liquidation market,” which equates to scrap value of the components based on that day’s metal prices. This approach is completely different from what a customer wants from a professional jewelry appraisal.

A formal jewelry appraisal determines replacement value of an object in a present day retail environment. Its purpose is to document the materials and labor costs of recreating a jewelry object in its entirety in the event of some kind of loss, such as theft or damage. In the event of such a loss, the appraisal serves as the document governing this recreation or repurchase, depending on the circumstances, so the customer can be “made whole” after the loss. 

Continuing education is a critical part of being a jewelry appraiser- or an estate buyer, for that matter.  An appraiser must stay abreast of everything happening in the jewelry market to accurately value a piece.  Discoveries of new gemstone deposits can affect the value of gemstones already set in jewelry, pushing replacement prices either up or down.  New methods for treating or creating gemstones also affect pricing, of course.  Lab-grown diamonds, for example, have totally upended the entire diamond business.  (I’m working on another Studio Story to address how lab-growns have changed the diamond calculus.  Stay tuned.)

While my team and I are required to know about a lot of product categories and think quickly on our feet, jewelry appraisers need to spend time carefully identifying materials and processes involved in individual jewelry pieces to satisfy the requirements of an appraisal.  This might include determining the location- even the exact mine- from which a particular gemstone originated, as well as who may have cut the stone, designed, or fabricated the piece.

As an independent jeweler, I appreciate that determining value for a family’s long-held jewelry items may come down to knowing exactly what makes them so unique.  In this day of fast and disposable fashion, it is gratifying to see that this level of detail is the standard of the field.  Jewelry appraisers, at least the ones I met at the NAJA Conference, regularly investigate objects at the microscopic level, or even the molecular level, to draw warranted conclusions about the gemstones offered up by the earth, and the jewelry pieces into which they are set.  If that doesn’t trip your Wonder Trigger, I don’t know what will.

Meanwhile... Back in Tucson

Shortly after our arrival in Tucson, we jumped right in.  First on our schedule: a seminar on one of my favorite gemstones, Opal, led by Travis Lejman, an internationally recognized authority on this colorful, mysterious gemstone.  With Travis’s guidance and plenty of visuals, we went deep into the chemical makeup of opals.  We dived deep into various types of opal, how they form in the earth, and mine locations around the world which produce opals with diverse plays-of-color unique to their locations. 

So many diverse plays-of-color, the primary characteristic for which opals are known. Photo from https://diamondbuzz.blog/a-comprehensive-guide-to-opal-patterns/

Australian Black Opal

Opals from Australia, for example, such as those from Lightning Ridge, tend to feature a distinctive black body color against which the colorful patterns play.   

Ethiopian Opal

Opals from Ethiopia, show a variety of body colors and bright fire. 

Rich red-orange Mexican Fire Opal

Opals from Mexico, often called Fire opals, tend to be most valuable when they appear in a rich red-orange color, due to their high iron content. 

I am often drawn to using Mexican Fire Opals in my own jewelry work, but it’s best to use opals in pendants and earrings, as they are moderately soft gemstones- 5.5 to 6.5 on the Mohs hardness scale- and they can be too soft for jewelry worn on the hands.  When I use them in rings, I notice scratches and wear on the facet junctions after just a year or two.

As the afternoon progressed, we learned about common opal treatments, involving compounds such as sugar, oil, or acid, that enhance opal properties, specifically its durability. Sometimes, gem-quality opal is sliced into thin layers which are adhered to more durable materials, such as slices of garnet or quartz.  These new “composite” stones are called doublets or triplets, depending on the number of slices involved.

Opal doublets or triplets use less gem-quality material when layered with other materials.

While they may not be as valuable individually as a single piece of solid gemstone material, doublets and triplets offer value of their own.  They can be inexpensive and reliable in a piece of jewelry, and much easier to set by a jeweler.  On the downside, it's very important for an appraiser to determine the kind of stone being valued when investigating opals already set in jewelry. Especially when set in bezels, it can be difficult to determine by loupe if what you see is a solid piece of opal or a layered stone. 

Opal in a gold bezel setting, which encircles the entire stone, including the edge. It can be difficult to determine gemstone composition when the stone is set in a bezel.

Toward the end of our day, we got some hands-on time examining opal samples of varying color and quality from all around the world.  These tiny treasures clarified what we learned while at the same time demonstrated just how much there is to know about these gorgeous gemstones.  Later in the week, as I walked the Gem Show sales floor, I kept my eyes open for opals and asked questions of their vendors, most of whom had traveled to Tucson from their home countries and were often the same families who pulled the stones from the earth.

The ability to value gemstone jewelry –opal and otherwise- is becoming more and more important all the time. In the United States, we are on the front edge of the largest transfer of wealth we’ve ever experienced, with the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers ready to divest of the many objects they’ve acquired during their economically advantaged lifetimes. 

Proper valuation- to say nothing of family harmony- by professional jewelry appraisers can only enhance our experience of our treasured jewelry objects.

Photo by Getty Images.

Whew! I certainly hope this Tucson Gem Show is only the first of many for me. Getting close to the gemstones and the people who know them is the best way for me to deepen my knowledge of gemstones. As in so much of life, learning something new means learning just how much more there is to know. I'm so grateful to have made it at least this far.

-xo