The Mystery of the Emerald (Lisa)

Some of you may already know the story - but here's a brief synopsis: In 1987 I was given a rough emerald by a man who worked for Mel Fisher, the famous Key West treasure salvor who salvaged the 1622 wreck of the Spanish galleon Atocha. (Read more about the shipwreck here.) The man never told me how he came by the emerald, but I always assumed it was from the Atocha. I threw it in a box and forgot about it. (I was 22 and not very smart.)

Twenty years later, I thought I should find out more about my emerald (especially after seeing similar stones selling for tens of thousands of dollars!). The king of emerald knowledge - especially Atocha emeralds - is in Key West, at Emeralds International. His appraisals ain't cheap ($250), but we decided to go for it. We brought the stone with us to Key West, and went to visit with Manuel Marcial.

Manuel was pretty excited about my emerald at first glance (and we were too, when we saw one in his display case that wasn't much bigger, and was listed at $48,000!). We left the emerald for him to study, and went off to plan our early retirement.

My cell phone rang a few hours later, when I was out on a flats skiff in the Key West backcountry with friends - and it was Manuel. Of course I immediately thought he was calling because he couldn't contain his excitement and wanted to share great news. Alas, that was not why he called. He wanted to pop our balloon earlier rather than later.

Turns out, the emerald did NOT come from the Atocha, or any other shipwreck. (Manuel is able to tell a lot of things about a stone when he puts it under the microscope, including whether it was on the bottom of the sea for 400 years.) And it is NOT a Columbian emerald, which was his original assumption - it is from Brazil, from a mine in the Itabira region. Manuel apologized profusely for his initial bad assessment, and assured me he would refund half the appraisal fee. But just when I was ready to ask him to just toss the stone in the trash bin, he sadly informed met that it was worth "only" $700 to $900. (My question is: how much did he THINK that sucker might be worth when he first eyeballed it???)

At any rate, the mystery continues. How did my friend come to have a Brazilian emerald that did NOT come from the wreck?? He worked for Mel, and was surrounded by nothing but shipwreck treasure all day! I'll never know. We didn't keep in touch, and I don't even remember his last name. I guess it really doesn't matter.

I'll eventually have the stone "free form" faceted, and hang it on a pretty chain around my neck. The mystery will live on........