Ludvic Lovak and the Emeralds

During my life as an antique dealer, I often tried to help my friends and acquaintances with a leg up the ladder of success. One of the struggling itinerary dealer friend I knew was a Czechoslovakian called Ludvic Lovak. He was a married man with two young children making a sparse living selling cheap £1 silver rings to small jewellery shops.

He had a hard time when he first arrived as a refugee, especially as he was unable to speak English. He always carried a worn out jewellery case, which he would display to the prospective shop owners hoping to sell his pathetic wares.

He would travel up from Devon and turn up at the shop every month. I always take a couple of dozen rings from him that I usually had to practically give away.

We would always have a cup of tea and a chat. I would always suggest that he should try to raise the quality of his stock, but he never had enough money to do so.

One day in 1980’s he arrived at my shop, opened his battered jewellery case and to my surprise it contained some lovely pieces of diamond jewellery.

I congratulated him on the better stock he was carrying and I asked him who was the jeweller that owned his stock of diamonds. He informed me that they were his and that he had a partner that also had about the same value in diamonds! I told him I was very happy for him, and I spent about £500 of items to sell in my shop.

On his next monthly visit, when he opened his jewellery case my surprise was tremendous. He had a fortune of diamonds for sale including a lovely diamond bracelet for £1,500, earrings for £2,000 and quite a few good diamond rings. A stock that was beyond possibility to purchase! When I asked him “who owns these lovely pieces of jewellery” he informed me "he was the owner and that his partner had the same amount for himself!"

When I asked him if he was one of the Great Train Robbers that the police were looking for, he laughed and told me that if I would give him a cup of tea, he would tell all.

This was his story:

"I went with a friend to the Diamond Bourse in London. My friend was a modest jeweller and he wanted to try to sell a diamond ring for £90."

"The Bourse is for jewellers to buy and sell wares in a coffee shop atmosphere. It is mostly patronised by the Jewish fraternity for they were the major players in this area. Now my partner tried to sell his ring, but had no takers. However on every table there was a printed notice from the Soviet Union informing them that a consignment of emeralds were to be sold to the highest bidder and all dealers were invited to attend a welcoming party at the Soviet Embassy."

"As the Soviets had been persecuting the Jews in Russia, the members of the Bourse had decided to boycott the sale."

"Now my friend knew that the Soviets always made a great party before a auction with caviar, champagne and all sort of free goodies. As he had a Bourse business card and the embassy was quite near, we decided to attend on the basis that the boycott did not concern us as we could not afford to bid for any emeralds."

"We were welcomed by the Secretary of the embassy as V.I.P.s. We had a lovely time and became a somewhat squiffy on champagne. After an hour or two, the Secretary asked if we would like to see the emeralds. Although we were slightly embarrassed, we agreed to view the stones and perhaps make an insignificant bid."

"He then took us in the lift to the basement. It was a bit dark in there, but in the corner there was a pile of rocks. It wasn't gem stones - it was emerald ore. It would be necessary for a lapidary to extract the stones from the rock. Luckily my partner had some experience before with emeralds. He picked up a rock and saw there was a lovely coloured deep emerald embedded. In fact there were many rocks of the same quality."

"He then asked the Secretary, what is the procedure for bidding? The answer given was that there were five hundredweights of ore and it was to be sold by that measure".

"To save our face we bid £1,500 a hundredweight. This was duly entered on the official form with our name and address from the business card and off we went home, having had a good time at the Soviet's expense."

"Imagine our surprise when we had an official reply that our bid was successful with a request to collect and pay for the consignment as soon as possible!"

"My friend (and now partner) and I went to all our friends and family to borrow the money, offering 100 per cent interest for a loan for one month. We purchased a open Ford Transit and the next day we shovelled all the rocks into the van. We rented a small private garage and put in about six steel locks. So our business was formed."

"My partner took one of the best rocks to a lapidary and received £10,000 for it a request for more ore. The biggest problem was we now had £30,000 in the bank and based on our past trading history, how were we to explain this to the Inland Revenue! The advice we had from our clever accountant was to get as much money as possible, go to Amsterdam and open up a diamond workshop."

"After we had bought a stock of good diamonds we opened up a superb workshop, hired good workmen and a manager to supervise. We are now both rich men!"

I then asked him if he would take £1,000,000 for the remaking Emeralds he categorically said "certainly not".

I was really happy for him and I congratulated him on his good luck.

That was the last I ever saw of him. He never came back to the shop and disappeared from my life. However I was sad to see a notice in the newspaper, that the estate of Ludvic Lovak had now been settled and so I presumed he had an early death.

Ludvic had mentioned that he had received a letter from the Soviet Union asking for the emeralds to be returned as they had made a mistake on the price paid. However as the official Soviet document was 'bona fide' there was nothing they could legally do to get the emerald get back.

I only hope that his demise was not some KGB type revenge.