We have more Wombat Lucky Dip lots listed in the Buy It Now section of the shop for $53 each. To see them all search "Wombat" in the Opal Auctions search bar.

A "lucky dip auction" is a type of auction format where the specific item or items being auctioned are not individually listed or described in detail. Instead, participants bid on a lot or selection of items, without knowing exactly what each lot contains. This format adds an element of surprise and chance to the auction process, as bidders are essentially taking a gamble on what they will receive. It's a fun and exciting way to auction items, often appealing to those who enjoy the thrill of chance and the possibility of uncovering a hidden gem. However, it's important for participants to understand the risks involved and to bid accordingly, knowing that the value of the items received may vary.

--Transcript--

As a new cutter, I always wanted to cut more expensive opal than I could afford, but I never had the chance. Nobody was going to sell me a $1,000 opal for 50 bucks. Here's how it works: I take a bunch of material from our miners, wash it, grade it, and then mix it all up. I post these auction lots in a completely random order. When you participate in this auction, you can get any grade from one to eight. This gives everyone an equal chance to cut some high-dollar opal. If you want to participate, you have to understand and accept that there's a chance you'll get a great high-dollar opal, but there's also a chance you'll get a beginner stone with little or no commercial value. It's totally a gamble; that's what a lucky dip is. There are different grades in the container, and you can draw any one of them.

I've got

14 grade #1 bags - 6ct-133ct

12 grade #1 bags - 6ct-50ct- average 13 ct - $238 USD NR Average

50 grade #3 bags - 6ct-50ct 1 piece or average 32 ct - $100 USD NR Average

540 grade #5 bags - 1 piece 5 ct - 100 ct (avg 23 ct) - $36 NR USD Average

15 grade #7 bags - 70 ct - $70USD NR Average

55 grade #8 bags - $17 USD NR Average

The container also has 10 grand prizes this time.

All of the material is rough opal rubs from Lightning Ridge, and your draw is completely luck-based. Grace mixed all 686 lots together randomly, and I printed off 686 SKU stickers. Every wombat lucky dip auction lot will have an SKU number below, and the bag that you get will correspond to the SKU number on the auction. When you win an auction, we go to the safe, find the randomly ordered bag with that number on it, and that's the one that you get without exception. It's all decided beforehand. If you're new to my shop, I have a detailed explanation of each grade down below, and I suggest you spend some time looking around the shop to familiarize yourself with the different grades. Regarding housekeeping for these auctions, we offer combined shipping to help you save. Add all of the items you want to your cart and check out only once. Once you check out, we can no longer hold your item; we ship almost immediately in our next shipping window. Also, like a scratch-off lottery ticket, once you see whether you've won a high-dollar opal or a low-dollar piece, we do not accept returns on these specific auctions. If returns are important to you, we have thousands of other auctions available in which returns are completely acceptable, and I suggest you choose one of these and give the lucky dip a pass. There will only ever be one wombat lucky dip auction set with only 686 parcels. You can find the odds of each grade in the description down below, along with the average sale price. In my last lucky dip auction, feedback indicated a preference for higher grade material, even at a higher cost per lot. So this time, there are fewer grade eight pieces and more grade one, two, three, and five parcels. You can find wombat lucky dip auctions in the no reserve section, but most of them are in the buy it now section so that you can pick up as many as you like, add them to your cart, and then check out. Type "wombat" in the Opal Auction search bar to see all of the available wombat lucky dip listings. If you have any questions at all, just go to the message center and send me a message. I'm here to help. This is still very much an experiment, and I welcome feedback on how to improve these auctions. I know they're a lot of fun for you guys, and they're fun for me to set up. It gives me something different to do. If you want to see some of the opals that are up for grabs, stick around for a quick look at the various grades and the grand prizes. Good luck, everybody, and happy cutting! Grade Description #1 Top Grade-Mostly Reds/Pinks- Dark/ Patterns -Expert Cutters #2 Very Bright- Clean- Mostly Red/Orange/Yellow -Expert Cutters #3 Gamble- Red/Orange/Yellow -Nice Blue/Green --Expert Cutters #4 Very Thin or Carving material- Intermediate/Expert cutters #5 Large Single Gamble piece - from Beginner to Expert cutters #6 Mid Grade Easy cutters - Intermediate cutters #7 Mid Grade Gamble Rough- Intermediate cutters #8 Beginners Cutting Rough- Beginning cutters #9 Craft Material- Not Appropriate for cutting cabs #10 No Colour Potch- Not Appropriate for cutting cabs.

Frequency Asked Questions

1. It says 1ct, are all of the bags 1ct?

No, not 1ct. All of the grading is as per my standard grading practice. I had to put something in that field and since all of the bags are different and keen eyes who are accustomed to my grading could use that information to "sniff" out the winners, I had to homogenise this part of the listings.

Generally speaking, the weights are listed above.

2. How does the Randomising happen?

Please see video for detailed explanation.

3. How many Luck Dip auctions can I buy?

As many as you like

4. How many bags of each grade are there?

Please see the above breakdown. This is also included in the introduction video.

Where are all of the Lucky Dip auctions?

I have to manually load them all up to Opal Auctions. This process takes many hours so if you start to hunt them down right after I have loaded the first one you won’t find any. Just wait a few hours and they will all be there. To see them all search “Emu” in the Opal Auctions Search bar.

6. Can I put auctions in my cart and leave them there?

If you just put something in your cart, anybody else can do the same with that item and the first person to check out gets the item. There are two exceptions. If you send an offer and it is accepted, then the item goes in your cart and nobody can take it. Also, if you win an auction that has a timer on it by having the largest bid when the timer hits zero, the auction goes in your cart and nobody can take it.

7. Why are there different prices on some of the Buy It Now lots, are they all the same?

They are all the same, one random bag from the lucky dip container, but there are some different early bird prices.

8. What happened to the winners from the last lucky dip?

You can see a lot of their great feedback on their wins in our customer feedback section.

9. Can you give a guide to the approximate value of each of the possible wins?

I’ve done this for you above in the container breakdown. The amounts quoted are calculated based on Lightning Ridge only material from the same mine as the Emu Lucky dip material. The averages are for just this year and were calculated across five hundred Live No Reserve Auctions.

Will I know what grade opal I get?

Yes, every bag has two stickers, one that is the grading sticker that is put on before the randomising process, and one SKU Sticker that is put on once all of the bags have been mixed up.

NOTICE: OUR OPAL AUCTIONS SHOP "53FROGS" RUNS HUNDREDS OF NO RESERVE AUCTIONS EVERY WEEK, BUT THEY ARE SPREAD ACROSS OPAL AUCTIONS IN MANY DIFFERENT CATEGORIES. TO SEE ALL OF OUR NO RESERVE AUCTIONS IN ONE PLACE, SEARCH "53FROGS" IN THE OPAL AUCTIONS SEARCH BAR. COMBINED SHIPPING IS AVAILABLE ON ANY ITEMS BOUGHT FROM OUR STORE "53FROGS" AND PAID FOR AT THE SAME TIME.

Please study carefully before cutting.

Images of the rough opals are taken with water.

We grade our opal in ten different categories as per the table below. The grade of this parcel is in the Auction Title.

Grade

Description

#1

Top Grade-Mostly Reds/Pinks- Dark/ Patterns -Expert Cutters

#2

Very Bright- Clean- Mostly Red/Orange/Yellow -Expert Cutters

#3

Gamble- Red/Orange/Yellow -Nice Blue/Green --Expert Cutters

#4

Very Thin or Carving material- Intermediate/Expert cutters

#5

Large Single Gamble piece - from Beginner to Expert cutters

#6

Mid Grade Easy cutters - Intermediate cutters

#7

Mid Grade Gamble Rough- Intermediate cutters

#8

Beginners Cutting Rough- Beginning cutters

#9

Craft Material- Not Appropriate for cutting cabs

#10

No Colour Potch- Not Appropriate for cutting cabs

Here is a brief description of the criteria we use when grading the opal rough:

#9 "Craft Material" is not opal that is appropriate for cutting cabochons. This rough is best for Chipping and putting into floating pendants, craftwork etc. If you want some cheap material to set into your concrete front yard cats eyes or have a mosaic in the bathroom, you want to spice up; this might work for you :)

#8 "Beginners Cutting Rough" is excellent for beginners to get used to cutting this material without worrying about destroying great opals. It is a mix of Nobby and Seam opal. It will cut lots of picture stones and low-value opals. You'll learn to cut open nobbies, chase colour bars, deal with sand and get a general understanding of what it feels like to cut opals. Great material for practising cutting lovely shapes and bringing that talent sharp before attacking more expensive colour. We sort out everything with no colour in it, so 97% of this material shows colour, and 3% will be a Nobby opal that may or may not have colour inside.

#7 "Mid Grade Gamble Rough" is excellent to hone your skills and learn to read trickier opals. This material is full of thin colour bars, colour bars that run diagonally through rough, wavy colour bars, tricky sand spots, and blind stones where I can see that there is colour in the rough but have no idea how deep it goes. Very challenging, sometimes very rewarding rough. Sometimes you cry.

#6 "Intermediate Easy Cutters"- exactly that, with an intermediate skill level, you should be able to cut lovely medium brightness sellable opals from this material. They are generally clean, and you should have a pretty good idea about the kind and size of finished opals you will cut from watching the videos.

#5 "Large Single Gamble Pieces" is pretty much what it says on the tin. These can range from beginners to expert level. Cutting big stones like this is a very different skill from cutting small "pointers" or standard 1ct-3ct opals. These are great fun to cut and can be very rewarding if you get lucky.

#4 "Very Thin/Carving" Most of this material is super thin and appropriate for making doublets.

#3 "Gamble Expert Cutters" look very bright/colourful and show good promise, but I can't see that they will cut a clean opal. The best blue/green material I find in the parcel also goes into this bucket.

#2 "Expert Cutters Clean" will generally give you precious bright sellable stones. They appear very clear to the eye. It looks like the colour bar covers most of the stone.

#1 "Top Grade" this material represents only a small fraction of our inventory. It is the very best material we find. Red on Black, Deep pinks, lovely patterns, and strong black opals all end up in this category. If I yell, "WOW, I want to cut this one!" it goes in this tiny dish.

All opal cutting is a gamble, and classifying is just my opinion based on my opal cutting journey and current skill level.

We DO NOT offer returns on Lucky Dip auctions.

Please check out within 7 days of your first win. We cannot hold your package after you check out. Once you check out, your package will be lodged with Australia Post during the next Monday or Thursday shipping window. If you select Standard Shipping, we are not responsible for any lost or damaged items.

Payment via PayPal or credit card via PayPal.

We ship all items within 48 hours of payment unless it's a holiday we will ship on the next working day.

Standard Shipping Time: ETA 5-21 working days

The buyer is responsible for any customs/import Duty or taxes levied in the buyer's country.

Guarantee: With this particular auction, your satisfaction is not guaranteed. Just like in any other game of chance, there will be winners and losers. I find these particular kinds of games to be a lot of fun and hope you will as well. If however, you would prefer a satisfaction guarantee, please DO NOT bid on this action and instead look into one of our many other regular auctions.