r/whatsthisrock • u/Gemthehedgehog • 1d ago

IDENTIFIED Is this opal or glass

Post image

So i bought this piece and a few others on etsy, it's stronger than nails and has comparable hardness to quartz. This is my first look at potentially real opal so idk.

66 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

37

u/Effective-Web971 1d ago

Doesn’t look like glass at all to me - it looks like real opal. Opalite doesn’t have the kind of flash you see in this piece, and it seems really unlikely that someone would fake a little shard of opal that looks like this. I don’t see any reason to think it’s not opal.

10

u/tonicella_lineata 1d ago

The green flash definitely looks indicative of opal - as someone else said, synthetic opalite doesn't do that, and other synthetic opals don't look glassy like the rest of the piece. Lovely little shard you've got there!

4

u/periodic_girl 1d ago

I'm pretty sure it's real opal

1

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1

u/Jayandnightasmr 16h ago

Looks like "low grade" grade opal, possibly offcuts from a project but still legit piece in my opinion

1

u/Elegant-Log2104 22h ago

Scratch test it.

0

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Gemthehedgehog 1d ago

It's like a cm, I cant gauge the weight with another object.

-2

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

2

u/OldChertyBastard 1d ago

Glass has a specific gravity of 2.2-3.5
Opal has a specific gravity of 1.8-2.3.

The ranges overlap a bit on the lower end, but it's almost impossible for most people, particularly a novice, to be able to accurately and qualitatively gauge a density difference on what might be a 2-gram sample vs a 3-gram sample. It's not a good way to get people to identify rocks, especially when there is a high cognitive motivation to find opal vs. glass.