Journal

What rough Ethiopian opal costs per gram and per kilogram

Research · · Maedot

Abroad, the top grade of rough Welo opal sells piece by piece, at about $30 to $150 a gram: dealers in the United States, Europe and Australia ask that for clean pieces with strong play of colour in October 2026, and one US dealer has marked 18 such pieces of 2 to 7 g, listed in 2025 and 2026, sold out at $44 to $81 a gram. Fine cutting rough sold by weight is asked at $18 to $24 a gram ($18,000 to $24,000 a kilogram), and good commercial rough at about $8 to $12 a gram ($8,000 to $12,000 a kilogram).

The ladder, top grade first

  • Top single pieces. Mineral Miners, an online dealer pricing in US dollars, asks $98 to $148 a gram for flawless transparent pieces of about 3 g with fine to extra fine colour. In the Czech Republic, Peltram Minerals asks $29 to $42 a gram before VAT for Welo pieces of 5 to 17 g, and Minerals-Stones asks €29.58 a gram, about $33, for one piece of 26 g. On Opal Auctions, sellers in the United States and Australia ask about $55 and $60 a gram for a 22 g transparent crystal and a 25 g specimen, both with honeycomb patterns. The US dealer whose pieces sold out is Mineral Mike, in Indiana; its highest, at $81 a gram, was a 2.94 g dark-base piece listed in 2026.
  • Fine cutting rough, by weight. Kingsley North, a US lapidary supplier, asks $24 a gram for its Grade A, which it describes as having the most consistent flash and deep colour, or $18 a gram from 20 g. Jacksonville Gems and Jewelry, in Oregon, asks $20 a gram for flashy rough and says it has a kilogram available, the only kilogram offered at a stated rate by a seller outside Ethiopia that we found. Single pieces of 6 to 15 g from shops in Switzerland and the Czech Republic are asked at $21 to $23 a gram.
  • Good commercial rough. Kingsley North's Grade B, for newer cutters, is $12 a gram. An Arkansas shop asks $10 a gram for "AAA" pieces of 1.5 to 3 g, and a private seller in Germany asks €1,440, about $7.90 a gram, for a 203 g parcel of colourful pieces.

Kilo lots and mixed parcels of small or pale pieces sell for far less, because most of their weight will never cut a fine stone. Declared export values per kilogram average every grade shipped, most of it ordinary, so they say little about the price of fine material.

Asked and sold

Nearly all of these figures are asking prices. The best evidence of sales is Mineral Mike's shop: half of its 18 recent pieces marked sold out went at more than $52 a gram, though the shop shows neither the date of sale nor any discount. Its older sales run as high as $95 a gram for a dark-base piece of 6.7 g. Some top asks stay open for months: the same dealer's 40 g specimen with very fine cutting material, at $4,899 or $123 a gram, has been listed since March 2025.

What fine rough is worth to a cutter

In Rapaport in 2021, a US wholesaler put very high grade cut Welo opal at about $300 a carat and medium quality at $60 to $150, and an official of Ethiopia's mining ministry put the yield from rough to cut at about 30% by weight. A gram of rough is five carats, so at that yield it cuts about 1.5 carats: about $450 of very high grade stone at that rate, or $90 to $225 at medium quality, before the cutter's labour and losses. That is why rough that will cut top-grade stones sells for tens of dollars a gram, and rough that cuts small or medium stones for a few. These are cut-stone prices, not rough. In 2011 a US dealer told Rapaport rough ran from under $1 a gram for low grades to $50 for nicer goods.

Why a price per gram does not scale

A single piece priced per gram cannot be scaled to a kilogram: $100 a gram for a 3 g piece is not an offer of $100,000 for a kilogram, because few kilograms hold only such pieces. For a parcel, the by-weight prices of fine rough are the better guide. Parcels of hundreds of grams or kilograms are sold privately, exporter to cutter or importer, and most Ethiopian opal goes to the cutters of Jaipur (where Ethiopian opal goes); those prices are not published.

Shop prices abroad already include freight, import duty, the shop's margin and, in Europe, often VAT, and they sell a few grams at a time. Grades are each seller's own, so judge a parcel by its photographs, video and the points a cutter checks. Much Welo opal is hydrophane: wet, it looks clearer and weighs more, so prices per gram compare only on dry weights (dry or wet; carats, grams and kilograms).

Currencies were converted at the European Central Bank's reference rates of 27 October 2026: €1 = $1.115 and CHF 1 = $1.207.

Buying from Maedot

Maedot exports opal from Addis Ababa, wholesale parcels first and single stones on request. Sebsibe Alemneh's team examines every parcel, and you can inspect in person in Addis Ababa, by live video or through samples. How buying works has the steps.

Sources

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