Those of us who have a loved one born in October may be shopping for opals right now, since opal is the birthstone for October.  As your resource for gemstone shopping guidance, we thought we’d do some shopping around for you, and give you a sense of where the best deals can be found on opal jewelry.

Remember, before buying opal jewelry, you should be well versed in the characteristics of opals and how the affect the opal’s value.

Essentially, you want to take into consideration opal size, opal play-of-color, opal colors and type of opal.

In searching for good deals on opal jewelry, here are some of the things we found:

This ring is offered by Jewelry Television.  In general, they seemed to have the best selection and value for large opals (over 2 carats).  The play of color and overall quality of the stones seem to be marginal.  But if size is what you’re after, this is a good place to check out.

This ring is offered by Fortunoff, a New York Department store.  In our search generally, the department stores had the poorest selection and value in opal jewelry.

This ring is being sold online as an antique.  The opal is a nice size (almost 1 carat), but is of marginal quality.  This ring is a good buy only if you like antiques.

We tended to find the highest quality opals and best selection among Australian vendors selling the products they have produced.  This one is from Opals Down Under.  It is one of many high quality opals with very special play-of-color.  They have jewelry and opals on their website for hundreds of dollars and thousands of dollars.

And finally, the best deal.  We were amazed to see this quality for this price.  The source is opalmine.com.  This website has very high quality opals fro very reasonable prices.  We have never bought from them, so we can’t vouch for customer service or shipping, but if they are what they say they are, this is the best deal.

Now we are off to the Intergem show in Austin, Texas!