Opal. How to protect yourself from counterfeiting?
Time does not stand still and it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish natural opals from artificial fakes. Let's consider the main options:
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The Sun.
If you look at a natural opal against the sun, your fingers should be painted in all the colors of the spectrum. A fake will not play with colors like that.
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Unique patterns.
In natural stone, the patterns on the inside should not be repeated, and the color, despite the &"play", will be uniform.
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Purity and transparency.
In synthetic opals, a dark translucent substrate is visible. And natural stone will be transparent or slightly milky.
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Price.
Natural stone is on par with gold, and a fake is not very expensive.
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Multilayered.
There is no gluing in natural stone, and if you look at a fake, you can find thin, even stripes where the layers were connected.
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Iridescence.
Clear zoning of colors is noticeable in fakes. Natural opal is distinguished by a soft iridescence.
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Bubbles.
Looking at the stone under a magnifying glass, did you notice bubbles in the structure? Then you have a fake in your hands. They arise from the temperature difference during glass processing. Natural stone will be clean.
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Stickiness.
The most unusual way to check. If you put a stone to your tongue and it sticks, you have a fake. A real stone won't do that.
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Ready to test your opals?