Opal Digital

Our Mission …

To provide you with top quality opal gemstones, rings, earrings, pendants, and other inlaid jewelery from the South Australian opal fields.

Our catalogue has a wide range of boulder, white, crystal, dark and black opals. There is an excellent range of inlay jewelry, including ladies and men’s rings, pendants and earrings. Those seeking an appreciating asset will find our investment opal and curios hard to resist.  Every effort has been made to represent each gemstone as faithfully as possible. Our Exceptional Opal Feature is an excellent example of how we are achieving this!

Our Digital Showroom …

The downside of movies for those using modems is that they will take time (up to 5 minutes for the movies) for your browser to load. You can continue to examine the rest of the catalogue while one movie loads. If you are experiencing problems with playback of the movies you can right-click on your mouse and select “Save Target As…” (Netscape users please select “Save Link As…”) to download the movie to your hard drive.

The late 18th and early 19th century saw the opal lose its popularity in Europe. Underground mining began in the Hungarian deposits however conditions for the mined opal were less than ideal. They dried out and became crazed. As the demand diminished, the Hungarian mines closed.

A typical open cut opal mining operation today

The 1890′s saw Australian Opal appear on the world market. The Hungarian mines, concerned about their diminishing sales, intimated that Australian Opal was not the genuine article. Gems with the brilliant Australian fire had never been seen before.

A hand winch over an opal mine shaft still used today

Common opal was first discovered near Angaston (South Australia) by Johannes Menge, a geologist, in 1849. Precious opal was first mined at White Cliffs (New South Wales) in 1890. This was followed by Opalton (Queensland) in 1896, and Lightning Ridge (New South Wales) in 1905.

In 1915 opal was discovered at Coober Pedy and mining established there soon after the First World War. The 1920′s saw the start of small diggings at Mintabie but serious mining did not start there until 1976. In 1930 mining started at Andamooka but did not really begin in earnest until 1946.

Rings are often worn all day. As with any stylish fashion-wear, a ring should reflect style and grace so it needs to fit well and wear comfortably. This is why correctly sizing a ring is so important.

With inlay opal rings it is even more important because the ring and the opal segments are made to very close tolerances and once made, the ring can only be resized up or down one size. Resizing beyond that has been known to pop the opal segments out of the ring or worse still, crack the opal!

As you can see, there is not much room for error when your ring is being sized. There are steps that you can take to accurately measure your finger and be assured that your ring will fit comfortably and look the best it can.

Have your ring size measured by a jeweller (most will do this for free) towards the end of the day when your fingers are usually largest. The same advice is often given when having your feet measured for buying shoes.

Measure finger sizes when your hands are warm. Cold fingers are smaller than warm fingers so let them warm up to room temperature.

I will arrange to resize my custom rings for you at no extra charge. If the inlay ring that you choose from my catalogue is not your size I will arrange to create an identical ring for you (please allow about two weeks)

When you purchase a ring from me please refer to the following chart of international ring sizes. When you have your ring size measured make sure that you ask your jeweler what size standard he uses. When entering your “Delivery Details” there is a text field called “Additional Information” where you can enter your ring size, which measuring system you used and any other comments.