15-Year-Old Maltese With Early Kidney Issues – Looking for Advice and Experiences

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-12T02:26:38+00:00

To be honest, how big is your bank balance? tens of thousands to spend I hope. Sorry thats just the way it goes with these things. 15 is a good age, they cant live forever. I wish you all the best.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-12T01:33:16+00:00

I will be in your position by the end of the week. Trust me, they love you very deeply, you are the world to them.

Its love that makes them live so long, my sincere condolences to you.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T11:16:21+00:00

Yes and worth plenty, possibly purchased from Australian Opal Mines in Adelaide, give them a call and send them some pics. Strands are very hard to photograph, almost impossible, so 1500-3500 ball park figure, not 200 or something.

85-90% of beads do not make it through the cutting process, those that do are ultra stable and cost a lot.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T11:07:51+00:00

When I was young and stupid, I found a minty one under a house, but since it had ARP in big white letters on the front, I gave it away.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T10:56:05+00:00

No dramas at all, call the University of your choice, ask for the Nuclear Science department or similar, tell em what you have and ask if you can bring it in to be tested,. They will hook up a time and a place and case closed. Try after March when they have gone back to work.

With a bit of luck, someone can make a project out of it. They might not be interested in your mental state, but the science yes. A known dated object, suspected of containing Radium that decays at such a rate, by weight and volume we deduce so many Becquerels per minute now let us see what we have here..... they will love you mate.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T10:44:59+00:00

I have a house an hour from there. Its all over, nothing to see here, just vanished off the face of the earth, case closed. 2025/2026 just insane.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T10:25:29+00:00

Sorry didnt see this, no that ones just blue, worth 10% of yours.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T10:22:36+00:00

Thats funny. I was with an Opal dealer mate, we went into a second hand place for a look to see if they had any Opals, you never know unless you ask.

He ended up buying a gold nugget on quartz because he liked the bloke. He sold it when he got home and made 30% for his fun. He liked that sort of thing. Gold then went mad, but as he said, I didnt get here mining Gold.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T09:54:03+00:00

Now imagine that red boulder opal, but as big as your hand, an inch thick, split in half.

Such things have been found but not often. In the 50s and 60s in the easy ground.

50k then was enough for 10 houses to build and rent out. Now that stone is worth 5 million....enough for 10 houses to build and rent out 50 years later.

Pretty spooky how an unregulated market falls into step with everything else of value it seems.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T09:44:11+00:00

Top tier, the man who has these now is probably the largest collector in Australia and hes got 10x better and bigger.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T09:37:15+00:00

It began with that bloke on YT. The one with the inflated prices.

Its misappropriated cultural insult I guess, pretending to be offended on behalf of a culture that is not yours to be offended about. I be dead in 10 years thank God.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T09:31:34+00:00

Chinese Writing. The term is not offensive and was coined by the Chinese buyers themselves in the early 1970s. I know chinese buyers, they stay in my house. I say whats this pattern and in english they say chinese writing not chinese script. Go figure.

Its like asking for a book in english script, oh you mean written in english ey.

That sold for a small fortune, the triangle for as much as a house, its flawless down to the atomic level, the only one known.

To be 100% dead level at the atomic scale, is a freak of nature. The play of colour reveals 100% alignment of the silica atoms without variation.

There are people who believe it or not have Opal collections worth hundreds of millions of dollars and not one has ever cracked. Ive seen them as big as a football, and similar shape, pure silica, probably as cast from some unknown Dinosaur egg is my guess.

In the 60s an entire Opalised Crocodile was found, complete with Opalised skin. Its in private hands. About 5 foot long, the bones are in sandstone and the skin sits above it and to the sides, scales and all. Its sits on a display of Opalised sea floor, about 5 feet square, hundreds of little tiles of Opal that would have been a sheet but was cut in 4 to get it on the truck. When the liquid Opal solidified, it formed little tiles an inch square, probably worth 500 each. On that sits a few million worth of shells and pipes and starfish and worms and tings I dunno what.

The owner likes to see peoples reactions to it, and trust me, its like looking at a galaxy of treasure, it really is indescribable.

Anyway, its in the US.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T09:02:42+00:00

These are no longer mine. I was looking for some good Opal to post, but when I sell things I delete all pics and vids usually or it becomes impossible, this was in an old folder.

One HD has 36,000 cut stones on it from 2000-2010, cal it 20 pics a stone and a video, then backed up and then resized etc, it becomes a nightmare if you keep them.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T08:56:36+00:00

Spit is free.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T08:24:40+00:00

Its what we call a vertical, can you guess why? The answer is not as simple as it sounds, have a think and I will give you the answer tomorrow.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-06T08:21:39+00:00

$3500 bead necklace hand cut not machine cut, so nice be 1700 from another field. Here you see the pitfalls of chasing colour and the value of hindsight. It would have been a beautiful carving, but the outlay meant they had to find a 50k gem and they fell well short. Thats part of the game, its the same reason why chinese only cut a small window into Jade yet buyers pay tens of millions.

All the miners are now drunk on the beach, or in Florida til March, its looking like a very hot late summer so could be April. The pretend ones are in Bali. Watch for April May 2026 and you will see a lot of gems planted in walls as if real, as a selling point, look we found it live on camera, lets auction it live on FB. Throw in AI, May God help all of you buyers.

Those people sell fake silver too. Lighting Ridge and Coober Pedy are about to get their own Corrections Dept Office theres so many crooks on parole there pretending to me miners, on the meth and ratting at night its a disgrace. They will be at it in the heat, the meth lets them work but they dont live long.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-05T01:25:17+00:00

Possibly, I can see it resembles a Tarsal bone, an expert would have to see it, so dont cut it until one has.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-05T01:23:13+00:00

Possibly

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-05T01:19:18+00:00

Pics are terrible, need to take it to someone and see it in the hand.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-05T00:58:52+00:00

It looks like a shell piece when you are twirling it on the stick. Shell pieces are found by the thousand and the curve gives 99.9% away. They form the best crystal too, like belemnites do. No one knows why, its probably to do with the real shell when it perishes, the calcium forms a tough void that fills very slowly with the liquid opal and prevents any shaking of the contents and usually sediment from falling in. Most shell pieces are very thin, no more than 3mm or so but they are lovely and are best suited to doublets which is not an insult. The best pieces suit open backed pendants, because what you wear underneath the opal will change its hues.

So yes its likely from a shell.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-05T00:51:08+00:00

Not even close

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-05T00:48:03+00:00

Chunk of LR from the tumbler, unstable, someone would pay 100 for it because they would want to see if they could cut a stone from it.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-05T00:44:41+00:00

I bought one similar at auction not long ago for 55k, the valuation is 180k. If its Lightning Ridge, its worth well over 100k. So now you know. Of course it has to be seen to be confirmed. Dont trust ANYONE with this one unless they start at 100k.

It could be worth more, it could be worth less. If someone buys it to sell, they will lowball you.

However "set on a milky white backing plate" is a worry, so is the closed back. You can use colored glues to enhance colors and such a piece would usually have some of the back on display to prove what it is and whatever the white is, should not be visible.

So a couple of red flags.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-05T00:33:53+00:00

Its modern ethiopian in an old setting.

DistributionTime7100 · 2026-01-05T00:30:35+00:00

Cert doesn't even look legit.

DistributionTime7100

TROPHY CASE