What people say
Unlucky to wear unless it is your birthstone.Objects · 260 searches a month
Opal bad luck
Opal bad luck: unlucky to wear unless it is your birthstone. First recorded in 1829 — Walter Scott's novel Anne of Geierstein, it is about 197 years old — the 29th oldest of the 40 superstitions we have dated. Opal contains up to 20% water and can craze if it dries out or is knocked — so opals do fail more often than other stones, which lends the story evidence it does not deserve.
When it actually starts
How old is this one
First recorded
1829 — Walter Scott's novel Anne of Geierstein
That makes it
about 197 years old
Rank by age
29 oldest of 40 dated here
Category
Objects
Searched
260 a month
One of the few superstitions with a single traceable author. Scott's novel featured an enchanted opal, and European opal sales reportedly collapsed by half within a year of publication.
Why it stuck. A commercially damaging story spread by rival stone dealers is the documented mechanism here — the belief had a market behind it.
What is going on
Opal contains up to 20% water and can craze if it dries out or is knocked — so opals do fail more often than other stones, which lends the story evidence it does not deserve.Where it applies. European and North American; Australia, which produces most of the world's opal, treats it as a national stone.
Recorded around the same time
Opal bad luck is the 29th oldest of the 40 dated superstitions here. Of those, 6 are younger than a century and 5 predate the common era.
First-recorded dates are the earliest documented appearance in written sources, not the earliest possible origin — an unrecorded practice can be older. How the dating works and where it is uncertain →