Larger pieces may incorporate multiple opals, but most you’ll see are just cabs centered on one opal. The artisans create a cabochon centered on the opal out of the rough stone.
They’re very hard to remove from the host stone, so people got creative. Known as Canterra Fire Opals, these opals are found in rhyolite bedrock. Mexican Fire Opal usually appears as polished or cut specimens, but there’s a market for those that include the matrix of the stone as well. Like all opal, it’s a relatively soft and fragile stone that should be treated with care. It’s not quite a common opal, but the lack of fire makes it hard to classify as precious opal as well. There are some truly impressive Mexican Fire Opals out there, but most are essentially a solid color stone. Great specimens, with a lot of color play and unusual size, can fetch over $10,000 per carat on the other hand. Green is the most common color to be found displayed in these stones.īasic fire opal is actually an affordable stone, averaging about $10 per carat on the retail side of things. Color zoning seems rare in these cut stones, but some do display fire. They’re often cut as faceted stones, making them fire-colored gemstones. The name can help when you’re trying to identify a stone to buy, however. Don’t call them that, it’s confusing and also used for transparent Ethiopian hydrophane opal which makes things even more confusing. Indeed, Mexican Fire Opals are sometimes called “jelly opals” due to their solid coloration. Their coloration ranges through the normal shades of a fire, hence the name, and they’re noted for often lacking the color play on the interior that has made opals from Australia and Ethiopia so famous.
Mexican Fire Opals are just orange common opals that are found in Mexico and a few other locations. The rare specimens of Mexican Fire Opal that display fire may be referred to as Precious Mexican Fire Opal, again with no regard to their origin.
Even more fun, not all of the material comes from Mexico but a gem from Nevada will still be called Mexican Fire Opal in many marketplaces just to distinguish it from other types of opal. Which is how we end up with Mexican Fire Opal as the name for any common, translucent opal that comes in shades of yellow to red, with the latter being the most prized. “Fire opal” is commonly used to refer to precious opal, as a layman’s description of the play within it. The problem arises in how people talk about them. Precious opal has flashes of color, common opal does not. That’s really all there is to it, it varies from chalcedony by being a bunch of tiny silica spheres stacked together instead of possessing a microcrystalline structure. Opal is a heavily hydrated amorphous silica stone. A Matter of Terminologyīefore we go any further, we’re going to need to clear some things up.īecause trade names are just… horrible. Want to learn some more about them? Then read on, as I dig in and help you learn the what, why, and hows of these fantastic precious stones. These yellow-to-orange opals come in a wide variety of different looks, but the common factor that binds them together is translucency and colors. Mexican fire opal is one of the more famous gems sourced in the upper portion of the Americas. Raw Mexican Fire Opal (Credit: John Brandauer – Flickr CC)
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