Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Honey Opal

A warm golden-to-amber opal ranging from translucent common opal to precious stones that flash play-of-color over a honey body.

Precious opal from the Mintabie field in South Australia, known for hard, bright crystal opal and some dark-bodied stones.

A golden-toned opal ranging from translucent common opal to precious stones flashing color against a warm yellow body.

A glowing orange-to-red opal whose warm body color resembles flame; some stones add flashes of play-of-color.

A tourmaline displaying two or more distinct colors in a single crystal, prized for natural color zoning like watermelon and bicolor stones.

Australia's classic light-bodied precious opal from Coober Pedy, famed for milky white stones flashing pastel rainbow play-of-color.

Syrian Garnet is an old trade name for fine deep-red almandine, historically tied to the Syriam region and prized as 'precious garnet.'

A common rock-forming potassium feldspar, the Mohs hardness reference at 6, found in granites and used in ceramics and glassmaking.

A durable magnesium aluminum oxide gem that occurs in many colors and was long mistaken for ruby.

The classic gem opal that flashes shifting spectral colors, defined by the diffraction effect known as play-of-color.

The rarest and most valuable opal, with a dark body tone that makes its flashing rainbow play-of-color blaze brilliantly.

The most common precious opal, with a pale milky body that shows softer pastel flashes of play-of-color throughout.

Opal from Australia, the world's leading source of precious opal, ranging from white and crystal to prized black and boulder types.

A nodular rhyolite geode-like ball whose plain exterior hides a star-shaped agate or chalcedony core when cut.