'Dr. Gem' returns to Homosassa roots
The man known for collecting interesting and rare items from around the world is back and open just in time for holiday shopping.
By RAGHURAM VADAREVU
Published November 27, 2004
HOMOSASSA - After nearly four years away, the "doctor" is back.
Joseph Dawson, a jeweler and gemologist who is known as "Dr. Gem" in the trade, and who has built a reputation for collecting strange and rare treasures from around the world, has returned to Homosassa.
On Friday, as holiday shoppers flocked to stores and malls, Dawson busily stocked an old bank building he bought and renovated at U.S. 19 and W Bradshaw Street. Dawson is filling his newly opened store with artifacts and boxes of jewelry from his closed store in St. Pete Beach.
"I've been at this a long time," he said, darting around the store and pointing out items in his vast collection like a barker calling spectators' attention to attractions at a carnival. "I have a whole vault full of treasures."
Indeed, he does.
At the entrance to the store, Jewels and Diamonds, two statutes of knights stand guard. Inside, there are six vaults, two of which were part of the old bank and four that stood more than 6 feet tall and weighed 4.5 tons each.
A walk into a 12- by 10-foot bank vault reveals part of his unusual collection.
A skull carved out of a 22.2-pound chunk of dark green volcanic glass called obsidian sits inside a box. Standing on the floor is a 3-foot-high horse and rider carved out of ivory and bone with gemstone insets. He also has a 119-pound meteorite known as the Nantan Iron Meteorite, which reportedly fell to Earth in Guangxi, China, 480 years ago during the Ming Dynasty.
On a shelf sit two slot machines from early last century. The first is a penny slot machine that was used in bars during the early 1920s, Dawson said. The second is another penny slot that pays out in gum balls.
"A walk-in vault for me is like heaven," he said.
In the showroom, Dawson had arranged dozens and dozens of pieces of jewelry in display cases. He has more than 2,000 rings in the store. He pointed to one - a necklace, earrings and ring set encrusted with 3,683 carats of diamonds and 3,674 carats of emeralds - and said it was worth more than $150,000.
In a back room, Dawson has a work space where he builds jewelry sets himself and engraves silver and other metals.
Dawson had moved to Homosassa for the first time in 1993, when he relocated his popular shop from Masaryktown in Hernando County. The late Donald Vesley, who had owned Riverside Inn and Riverside Inn Downtown in Homosassa, had persuaded Dawson to move onto his property, the defunct Auto Club Bar.
Vesley told the St. Petersburg Times at the time that Jewels and Diamonds would fit into his plans for an entertainment and information complex that tied together his downtown holdings and the Riverside Inn.
Over the years, Dawson, a New Jersey native and former Army paratrooper, had written a well-read column on jewelry for several local newspapers.
But he is perhaps best known for crusading against a high-tech scam in the gem industry that could cheat consumers out of millions of dollars in 1992.
Dawson at the time said new technology has allowed gem manufacturers to enhance the clarity of diamonds to avoid detection by jewel experts. A laser carves out flaws and the cavities left behind are filled with a fiber-optic compound.
The result is a diamond that looks exactly like one five times its value. Even experts using microscopes and other visual techniques normally cannot tell the difference.
When Vesley died in 2001, Dawson could not work out a lease agreement with the executors of Vesley's estate and decided reluctantly to leave for St. Pete Beach, Dawson said. When he found the bank, with its vaults intact and easy access to U.S. 19, Dawson decided to come back.
"I never wanted to leave in the first place," he said.