Opal earrings

Is there a way to tell if opals are real or man made? They're a lot more flashy than they look in the photos. I know the first man made opals were 1975 but have no idea if these pre date that. Not sure why some of the photos are on here twice!

 

The back side looks like natural opal.

 

Warning signs include lots of very small colours of equal size and brightness, regular patterns and pieces that look too even. If you look side on signs of columns of colour is indicative of lab grown stones. If you have a microscope synthetics sometimes have a chicken wire look to the colours at 20x to 30x mag.

The very best synthetics are now that good that they need to go to a lab for analysis which is a real pain and will drop the price of opals across the board over the next few years.

 

A natural opal with that much color play in a generic sterling setting? I'd be suspicious right off the bat. Not even a doublet? Squared.

 

One way to check is if the colour specks change, vanish, or move around as you look at the stone from different angles. If so, it is likely to be natural.