From: John Church
Email: john.church@eudoramail.com
Date: 19-Apr-2003
Time: 04:42 AM
What am I bid for an Oz of common, an oz of prercious? We don't carry these as a stocked catagory. Our opals get sorted by their dry grade into the by the gram catagories. In cut dry stable for years stones we have a wonderful 4.55ct peach harlequin dry & crystal blue with red flash wet (dragon stone) twig free form at the new Swordfish Mining site. http://www.virginvalleyopal.com It's a thousand a ct retail. Super gem one of a kind. (More photos coming along with the shopping cart)I have tumbled stones that all exhibit this behavior as a common mineral specimen with only so-so contra luz color occasionally. A percentage of our dry white cutting rough started as crystal when fresh, but the only way to high grade out the cachalong would be to re wet the rough again. It's gem grade after its been proven stable by repeated drying and wetting in the polishing process which most cachalong is. Almost every one is a shade of tan or brown. If you want real cheap rough you'll have to buy wet and hope it clouds when it dries. Until its dried you can't tell what it will do. You could just buy oz of 1$ gm rough then highgrade out what you desire. We also have a small dish of 40$ (NET) stones from tuscon that we were running as a special. These are free forms (never used a dop for esthetic reasons) but some were tan cachalongs with decent color. Sorry were not all cataloged and priced but we have stuff that no-one compares to much. Good luck on your hunt.