The pocket of opal that miners yearn for is one that is about 10mm thick about 1 metre wide, about two metres long and is full of glorious, bright colour!   In this small area, it is possible to find a pocket of opal worth a million dollars.  In Mintabie, pockets of opal may be a found a few metres deep, or tens of metres deep. It has often been the case that the bulldozer has uncovered the best pockets of opal on a claim in an area where no holes were drilled, or on a level where nothing was expected.

In cases where a prospector drills opal, time has proven that ones chances of finding a valuable pocket are much higher if much of the surrounding area is excavated, if possible. It has often been the case that the most valuable pockets of opal would have been left behind if the miner had decided to try to recover the pocket by underground mining methods. This was evident after completing the cut with the bulldozer and finding that the best pocket of opal was not located where the trace was drilled, or was on a different level than the one that produced the traces.

There are a number of bulldozers working in Mintabie, and all of those bulldozer owners are willing to undertake work on a percentage basis if the traces drilled up are promising. An open cut mining operation is expensive to run and maintain, costing many thousands of dollars in fuel, and taking up to six months to complete a large open cut mine, but the rewards can far outweigh the costs. Time and time again, claims have yielded over 1 million dollars worth of rough opal. The value of this raw gem is multiplied many times after processing into opal products.

A typical arrangement for someone who has drilled up saleable opal and wants to contract a bulldozer is 60 - 70% of recovered opal, depending upon the quality and amount of opal drilled.  The claim owner takes on none of the operating costs. If the driller also wants to pay for the fuel used to complete the job, the percentage is usually of the order of 50%.