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[Opal Mike]

Hello Vince and everyone,

I will post some pics of more recent pieces….any objections it is Vince’s fault.

A few recent Marra Mumba pieces from some old material I bought about 5 years ago.. We spent most of our lives living and working from Coober Pedy and exploring the Australian Outback..  Of all our unique gemstones, I think this material is arguably the most beautiful, and best represents the colours and landscapes of our Australian rugged interior.

I have cut a series of large discs and rectangles that I think really show the colours and patterns best..

I will share a few with you.

Cheers,
Mike

[Opal Mike]

Not sure what is wrong with my pics..the pics are all distorted. The large ovals are actually perfectly round discs tablet cut, and the other one is a large cushion cut…pics are completely distorted..always seems to do this to me.

I upload everything from my iPad …save the images as a medium sized file..any ideas?

Mike

[Opal Mike]

Try again

[Opal Mike]

Ahh I have to use smaller sized files (images). I will try a few more..

[Opal Mike]

Now I have sussed that out…here are a few more..hope you enjoy looking at them.

Cheers,
Mike

[Opal Mike]

Few more …

[Opal Mike]

Stuffed those last ones again…here is what they actually look like…

[socalagatehound]

Those are all outstanding!!! Thank you!!!

[Opal Mike]

I’ll send this one again…since I stuffed up most of the previous efforts..

This one is one of my favourite pieces.. It is a fine example of the early Marra Mumba Tiger Eye deposit first mined by Glenn Archer in 1974. All of the Marra Mumba deposits are long gone sadly…

This piece has superb chatoyant across varying colours and bands of multi coloured tiger eye, mixed in varying structures and alignment which is unusual. It also has lovely small striations of jet black highly polished magnetite, zigzagging across the gem.

The chatoyancy of this piece is incredible. The polish I achieved on this piece is exceptional also. I say this because the material is typically varying in hardness and usually contains a mixture or conflagration of varying materials; including quartz bands, multi coloured beautiful Jasper, magenetite, and beautiful chatoyant tiger eye in a multitude of colours which can be layered in bands, or whisp there way through a gem. The material can also be highly mixed which I really like.

Cheers,
Mike
Cheers,
Mike

[peruano]

Wow.  Your efforts are so spectacular, that undoubtedly many of us are prompted back into the workshop to look for those pieces of marra mumba that we bought and have neglected to work on yet for whatever reasons.   I know its here somewhere.

[vitzitziltecpatl]

Yeah, you've given us all a standard we should hope to approach someday. Really nice cabs of top-shelf material.

Really don't see those color combinations anymore. Good reason to shop those estate and old collection sales.

[Felicia]

Just got around to looking at this, terrific material. All the sets of pictures look the same, and are as they should be, (round, for instance). Maybe you fixed them. Thanks for the look at the beautiful work. I haven't been on the forum lately, ran out of things to say.

[kent]

Beautiful pieces Mike. ...and this is why we are all here !!

[southerly]

Nice material, how long have you had that stash?