The history of opal is stranger than that of almost any other gemstone. This documentary traces the full story of opal, from the fire opals of the Roman Empire and Aztec Mexico to the black opal fields of Australia, and asks why so many unconnected civilizations were convinced this one stone was supernatural.

For most of recorded history, opal was the luckiest gem a person could own. Pliny the Elder ranked it just behind the emerald, and a Roman senator named Nonius reportedly fled the empire rather than surrender a single opal Mark Antony wanted, a stone valued at two million sesterces. In Mexico, the Aztecs called fire opal the hummingbird stone. In medieval Europe it became the eye stone, and the secret talisman of thieves.

Then, in 1829, a single novel by Sir Walter Scott turned opal into a symbol of bad luck, and its value collapsed across Europe for a generation. This is the story of how that reputation was destroyed, and how one South Australian dealer, Tullie Wollaston, carried Australian opal to a hostile London market in 1890 and broke a European monopoly that had lasted for centuries.

From the vanished inland sea that created it, to the underground town of Coober Pedy, to the Flame Queen opal that sold for one million dollars and later a small fraction of that, this is the complete history of opal and the human obsession that has followed it for two thousand years.

Chapters below.

Chapters
0:00 One Stone, Four Civilizations
3:10 Rome: The Opal Worth Two Senators
5:01 Mexico: The Hummingbird Stone
6:01 Medieval Europe: The Patron of Thieves
7:16 1829: The Novel That Cursed It
9:57 The Hidden Monopoly of Old Hungary
11:34 Australia Breaks the Monopoly
15:21 The Flame Queen

Hashtags
#opal #gemstones #history #opalmining #australia

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Mister Cravaz