Tips when buying Australian Opals online
To help you navigate the endless number of websites selling opals and opal jewellery, we've created a short guide to buying Australia's national gemstone online that offers some great tips and advice.
1) Do your homework
Make sure you only buy from a reputable online retailer, preferably one that has lots of experience in the opal industry and that is a member of a gemological or jewellery association.
Black lightning Opals are very proud to be a member of the Australian Opal association.
2) choose secure shopping sites
When spending money on a luxury item it’s vital you trust the merchant you’re dealing with, and one key sign of a trustworthy online business is a guaranteed secure shopping experience.
Black Lightning Opals uses a e-commerce space that provides a secure shopping cart with the same level of encryption large banks use to keep information safe.
3) Secure Opal web sites
Make sure that the Opal merchant web site you are visiting has a ssl certificate, and that the Opals are comming directly from Australia ! It's just commen sense that your Australian Opal should come from the source and not the US for example.
4) Never buy from social web sites
There are hundreds of people selling Opals on social media. Some of them are real miners selling directly from from the source, but a lot of sellers are amateurs selling off their rubbish. It's also very hard to know exactly what you are buying.
5) Never buy from eBay
Ebay has the most fake Opals on the market !
6) Accurate description
What you see is not always what you get with opal.
The gemstone’s ‘play-of-colour’ phenomenon means it’s virtually impossible to show all the colours and patterns of an opal through photography, so you may be pleasantly surprised when your opal contains different qualities than you first thought.
At Black Lightning Opals, we try to capture the best possible photographic representation of the opal you’re purchasing, and we’ve even included short videos showing the stone from all angles.
If you'd like to know more about Australian opals or would like more tips about buying them online, please contact us and we'll be only too happy to help.
Lightning Ridge Opals
What is an Opal ?
Opals are more than 150 million years old and are a hydrated amorphous form of silica (SiO2·nH2O), being most commonly found with limonite, sandstone, rhyolite, marl, and basalt. The Opal is the national gemstone of Australia.
Lightning Ridge in New South Wales Australia, is the main source of the black opal. These Opals contain a predominantly dark background, gray to blue and black, displaying a wide range of colours.
The Lightning Ridge area is a world-renowned centre of the mining of black opals and other opal gemstones. It also has the largest known deposits of black opals in the world !
Opal Descriptions & Pricing
All of our Opals are Solid and Natural from Lightning Ridge. We are a proud member of the ASN.
Disclaimer
If for any reason you are not satisfied with our product, you may return it at the customers cost within 30 days for a full refund.
