If you’re not aware, carbon dating is a process where scientists can determine the age of an object, or an event, as old as 60,000 years. Carbon dating was developed by a team of scientists led by Professor Willard Libby at the University of Chicago in the late 1940s. Willard would eventually win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in this arena.
In a nutshell, scientists can measure something, and compare it against something else, and then stand behind a podium and say – in an authoritative voice – “This piece of woolly mammoth poop is 41,000-years-old based upon carbon dating.” I mean, who am I to tell them that I think its 42,000-years-old.
But, how many of you can ‘Strontium Titanate Date’ something? I know I can, because I’ve done it. Where’s my Nobel Prize? The story goes something like this.
It’s around 1985, and I’m working at Rottler-Ulrich Jewelers, in the Valley Square Shopping Center in Lewisville, TX, a suburb of Dallas. It was at Rottler-Ulrich that I started my trade shop, CMK Company, that I still own to this day. The store had just opened, and I had just gotten out of jewelry school at the Texas Institute of Jewelry Technology in Paris, Texas. Back then it was called The Jewelry School at PJC.
The store opened about the same time as the cut-off to be included in the next year’s edition of the phone book and the Yellow Pages. Talk about a tough first year. Imagine calling the operator and asking for the phone number for a store that you couldn’t pronounce, in a shopping center that was brand new and not in the system yet either.
Somehow though, customers would find us. Customers like Martin, the guy I wrote about recently that got a phone whacked up against his head. Another customer that found us was a very sweet lady named Ms. Johnson. Ms. Johnson was a widow whose husband had died about 20 years earlier. She worked for the city and was approaching retirement age. Whenever she’d come in, I would ask her, “Did you bring me that million dollar broach to look at today?” She would tell me she didn’t, but she was starting to really think about selling it. Although I’d never seen it, she told me all about it.
She and her husband were in the oil business in West Texas back in the day. She told me that whenever a ‘well came in’, the owner of the well had to buy something extravagant to show everyone who was ‘the Big Kahuna’ in the Permian Basin at that moment. My friend Perry Graham, of Graham Brothers Jewelers in Amarillo told me how it works.
When a well hits, you hope that ‘the big flashy prize’ is jewelry. You could be competing against a new Rolls Royce, a luxury cruise, a 2nd vacation home in Tahoe, or it could be your $250,000 diamond necklace. If you’re in the jewelry business, you know which of the prizes you’re rooting for. Perry told me about a woman whose well had come in, and he sold her the aforementioned $250K necklace. She came in to pick it up wearing faded jeans and an REO Speedwagon T-shirt. She paid for the necklace, put it on, and then drove to the next town over to play bingo at the VFW.
On the day that Ms. Johnson and her husband’s well hit, he chose jewelry too. And boy did he chose well. Mr. Johnson took his wife to Europe to find just what they were looking for. I can’t remember if it was a genuine Fabergé, a Fabrikant, or a Cartier, but it was one of the important ones. And, back in the early 1950s, they paid around $100,000 for this magnificent bauble. She wore it to all of the balls that were held in West Texas at the time. Just kidding, she wore it to the VFW to play bingo because that was the only thing out there to do at the time.
After her husband died, their company closed, and she moved to Lewisville and worked for the city. The only thing she had left to show for that time in her life was the broach, which she had always kept in a bank lock box. Her entire retirement was in that broach, and finally one day, she called me and told me she was ready to sell it and she was going to bring it by for me to see. There was no way I could buy it, but I knew the right people that would get into a bidding war over it, and was excited to finally see it for the first time.
She walked in, and opened up an old velvet box from a fancy French jewelry store, and inside was the Holy Grail. She handed it to me, and I went blank, and handed it right back to her as I tried to catch my breath. She’d been ripped off. The 10 carat, flawless, D-color center diamond was fake. After about 30 minutes of all of us in the room coming to grips with the situation, I asked her if it had ever been out of her possession. She said no. All of the paperwork confirmed that what they bought was genuine. The provenance was unquestionable, but what she had now had been tampered with. The center diamond had been switched.
She’s devastated as you can imagine, and couldn’t understand how this could happen. She said the only time it was ever out of her possession was when they had used it as collateral on an oil deal with their bank. She and her husband took it out of their bank deposit box, and placed it in the bank’s safe deposit box a few rows away. About 4 or 5 months later, they paid off the loan, and she and her husband, and their banker, took it out of the bank’s deposit box and put it back in her own. I asked her when that happened. She said it was so long ago, she didn’t know, and didn’t have any of those records anymore. I asked her if it was possible that it happened between 1955 and 1962. After a minute of thinking about it, she said that she was positive it was in that time frame, and wanted to know how I knew that.
Like I said earlier, I don’t know anything about Carbon Dating, but by golly, I can Strontium Titanate Date with the best of them. Strontium Titanate was only popular as diamond substitute during those 7 years. Then we moved on to YAG, and then GGG. That damned banker took her broach and had the center diamond removed and replaced with a Strontium Titanate. Under the microscope, it was clear as day that it had been tampered with.
Although the story is a sad one, the piece was still very important, and very valuable. I think she ended up selling it for around $100,000. It was in spectacular condition, except where the gouge marks were when they lifted back the prongs. The buyer I assume put a period correct 10 carat back in it and then sold it to its next caretaker.
