![]() "If you were really interested in buying one, you'd have to contact a specialist," says Vargas. ![]() The double-locked vault door on the way in starts to make more sense. Red is one of the rarest shades found in a black opal. The specimen laid out in Holts is of particular note thanks to shades of red in its 'play of colour' (an industry term Vargas defines as the range of hues one can find in a precious stone). This composition means they're more delicate than diamonds. The gems are formed when a solution of silicone dioxide and water evaporates from the cracks of sandstone and the darker the body tone, the more desirable a black opal. And I use the word 'large' only in comparison to the slithers that precede it.īlack opals are so expensive because they're so hard to find. For the largest, most lustrous: a cool £23,500. As Vargas displays each small rock, a value is subtly printed on each envelope: for the smallest, £7,000. “That’s one of the biggest I’ve seen too." The hysterical fixation with the stone's value is spot on, though. “You don’t find this stuff on the high street.” He points to a third, minute slice of black opal laid out in the highly-secure office. "These are often collected as incredibly rare specimens, they're not used for jewellery and the like,” says Vargas. It would also be nigh-on impossible to find a black opal of the size Ratner comes to auction. In fact, the world's most valuable black opal – the cruise liner-sounding 'Aurora Australis' – was found in 1938 at Lightning Ridge in New South Wales. But Vargas says that 95 per cent of black opals are mined in Australia. The opening scene shows the black opal's discovery in a dodgy Ethiopian mine – this, we learn, is a gem whose provenance is as ethically questionable as Ratner, the man who acquires it. The Safdie's have deployed some artistic licence, it turns out. But to those in the know – and in Hatton Garden, everyone is in the know – all that glitter means you've got something worth much more than gold. ![]() So much so, that it could easily be mistaken for costume jewellery. Though no wider than a 20 pence coin, and just as slim, the tarry, shimmering button looks like something a child would dream up when asked to imagine something ‘expensive’. “That’s because they’re largely water-based silicas, letting light come in, and colour come out the other end, like a prism.” “Notice the way the light makes all these different colours shine through? Black opals do that better than any other stone,” says Holts Gems’ resident gemologist, Andrés Camilo Vargas, an expert that cut his own teeth (among other precious things) at an emerald lab in Colombia. In real life, even a 7.89-carat black opal won't quite show you the cosmos. It’s yet another half-truth from Sandler's motor-mouth diamond dealer. “They say you can see the whole universe in opals, that’s how old they are,” says Howard Ratner as he gazes upon a raw block of black opal – the uncut gem from which Adam Sandler’s latest hit takes its name.
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