Friendly miners, by showing you their hard won treasures from underground, will ensure that, if the 'opal bug' is in your system, you'll be back to dig dirt,cut opal, buy or sell stones and become involved in the many facets of the industry, one of the very few that is still available to the small operator. There are NO major companies or multi-national corporations involved in the extraction and sale of the black opal in Lightning Ridge. Sometimes glass or ceramic is used for the backing. If the slice of precious opal is very thin, the face of the doublet will be flat. If the slice of precious opal is thick enough, the top will be domed.
Domed doublets are more valuable than flat doublets of equal colour.
The colour of the thin slice of precious opal is dispersed through, and slightly magnified by the domed quartz face. It is easy to pick a triplet from a domed doublet for, viewed side on, the clearness of the quartz top can be seen. The quartz face of the triplet is harder, and therefore longer wearing than natural opal and, for this reason, is often favoured for ring stones. Most of the world's triplets are made from South Australian opal but some made from local opal are available at Lightning Ridge. High quality solids are often referred to as 'stones'.