A short article over on ABC which can be found here talks breifly about Synthetic Opal.

Synthetic Opal is becoming more and more common these days so its important to know what they are and what to look out for.

The article outlines that Opal miners in South Australia are saying the sale of synthetic opals is crippling the industry.

The problem being that it is not being properly policed and hence retailers are losing out. Some estimate to be around 300 million dollars a year.

One quote from Opal buyer Tony Wong says the introduction of synthetic products has been a devastating blow for the industry.

"They don't even want to buy the real opal because many shops they're trying to buy synthetic and they're mixing some real opal, so the one who's selling real opal, natural opal, cannot compete with the people that have synthetic opal," he said.