In Nevada there is some great black precious opal, common precious opal, precious opalized wood & more. Australia doesn't have our quality of wood preservation or the variety of species. World class petrified wood specimens & carnelian are mined in this unique world famous gem deposit. I'm a successful opal miner, cutter, and resident of the town of Denio since we bought property here & I made a homestead. I came in 1993 & never looked back for long. I love working with minerals to reveal their inner beauty then making jewelery almost as much as finding them is pleasure. Swordfish Mining has been vending at the Quartzsite QIA Pow Wow, Clouds, Desert Gardens, Gem & Mineral shows & area events with the state gemstone featured & online as actual miners with a 100% positive rating other than the ankle biting spam reviews from the criminals. Swordfish Mining was the Facebook flagship for Virgin Valley before it was torpedoed by false copyright claims.
I had health problems working rotating shifts running the dams & power systems after I completed my Apprenticeship with the IBEW at PG&E. From PP&L, after we automated our jobs away, I quit system operations to recover & live life instead of working for retirement. While enjoying the move out of the rat race I discovered a gem of a place called Virgin Valley in Northern Nevada that produces some of the worlds finest black opal. I joined forces with Leah after the dust settled.
My friends & mentors were JoAnn & Don Dietrich, RIP, owners of the Hi Desert Crafts rock shop in Lakeveiw Oregon. He was a blacksmith for the CCC when they created the sanctuary of Virgin Valley & his shop building is still standing next to the campground children, senior & handicap only fishing pond.
Don taught my first wife Geri to be a stone healer. We shared hours of adventures, information & locations in the region. They told me some little know facts about the mining district that helped my success. I came here rockhounding at the fee digs with my family & ended up being a fixture for life selling rocks, gems, proven mining claims & giving opal seminar tours.
Short story longer. There has been from the beginning a wanna be mine owner causing trouble. He overstaked Rainbow Ridge repeatedly trying to redefine federal law in his favor over all the current owners from something that was completed around 1925 on BLM ground but not applicable to DOI land.
He's lied about my family for greed & revenge ever since his conviction. I can shut up people who drank his koolaid forever when they hear the truth & read the papers. He confessed to the shooting/robbery later at Larrys' blue house & led TC & Bill to the stolen opals. The sheriff then found the guns in Leahs millsite outhouse. He blamed us all for his being caught, not the fact he was a murderous thief. He lies & says he was innocent but is obsessed with owning all the deeded mines (from his claims online). He is the definition of a domestic terrorist.
Half of the stolen opals in the burglary at the Rainbow Ridge Gift Shop were never recovered, so we assume the opal he might try to sell are still from the robbery as they were not claim owners or members of the Bonanza then & now are banned from all the fee digs here for life along with his family & buyers he has involved legally.
The Opal Queen is NOT for sale but he over-staked it only by mailing in a map, not on the ground. The owners did put in stakes and wont lose ownership. He can't afford the losses he causes if he takes Rainbow Ridge to court for their deed.
He lied to Facebook to get me disabled with a claimed copyright on a photo he stole from a book. All of Swordfish Mining's advice, information, show and tell photographs of opals, all of my business posts, pages, & groups were taken from all of you by HIM. Evil is real so dont go Pollyanna on me in my quest to expose his lying as anything other than warning you. Don't believe a word you read about any of us if it came from his vile lips without factual unbiased confirmation. He is a psychopath & I can't name the dirtbag or his front business name due to his prison polished lawfare would try and remove it while labeling it hate speech, not facts.
Come talk to any Fee Dig owner or the refuge staff, BLM, FBI, MSHA or Nevada who regulate the laws he is abusing with semantics for a true read of him. Never going to court & being proven delusional, wrong, and has to pay damages is his hope because he will lose then & have to pay, he has not filed a case yet. My lawyer tells me so. Also tells me he is not worth a plugged dime for damages.