CULTURE
I
t reads like the script for an Indiana Jones film – living with witchdoctors in South Africa, being chased out of the Dominican
Republic by the mafia and diving for gemstones off the coast of Scotland. But this isn’t some B-movie adventure – this is the life of Adam McIntosh, Scotland’s very own ‘jewel chief ’. McIntosh grew up in Fife and didn’t know
what he wanted to do with his life. So, aged 18 and with just £150 in his pocket, he set out to hitchhike around the world dressed in his kilt. His journey took him to Canada, where he lived with the Mi’kmaq native Americans, and then on to Australia, where he met a miner who had struck a seam of opals worth $500,000. ‘He put his leftover off-cuts of opals into
a sack for me and said I could have them if I bought him a beer in the pub, laughs McIntosh, now 31. ‘That’s where it all started.’ He brought the opals back to Scotland and
made simple jewellery by gluing them to clasps and chains to sell from a makeshift stall on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. ‘I walked into a couple of high-end jewellers
in Edinburgh – a 20-year-old guy in shorts and a t-shirt – and offered to sell them the gems. A lot of these guys took one look at me and judged me by my appearance because I wasn’t a typical gemstone dealer. They turned me down, they didn’t even look in my bag, which was very fortunate looking back now.’ Making his own jewellery launched McIn-
tosh’s career. Eventually, one jeweller passing by his stall saw the opals and recognised their value. The cash he paid allowed McIntosh to set off around the world again – and that’s when his adventures really began. One of his most exciting stories came while
he was in the Caribbean, after hearing about two of the rarest types of gemstone. ‘There are two stones in the Dominican
Republic, blue amber and larimar, that are extremely rare – rarer than diamonds – because they’re only found on the island,’ explains McIntosh. ‘Blue amber is found on the side of a mountain range and is dug out by coffee farmers when they’re not tending their crops. ‘I knew what price the miners were asking
for it and I knew the wholesale price was ten times higher. So I offered the miners $2 a gram instead of the $1 a gram they were asking. ‘The word got out within a couple of days that there was this young guy who would offer
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‘We were woken in the middle of the night by our translator, who told us that we had to get out of there’
them double the price. So I thought great – the miners are happy because they’re getting a really good deal, I’m happy because I’m getting as much of the material as I want, but the people who weren’t happy were the local middlemen who buy up all the material and then sell it on to their customers.’ Angering the local mafia led McIntosh into a
night-time race for his life. ‘Me and my girlfriend at the time were
camping in this coffee plantation and were woken in the middle of the night by our trans- lator, who told us that we had to get out of there,’ says McIntosh. ‘So we ran across the mountain range through the night and he shel- tered us in a little coffee hut, then arranged for
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