Manuel Marcial de Gomar
September 13, 1935 — July 23, 2026
The emerald community lost one of its longtime ambassadors on July 23 with the passing of Manuel Marcial de Gomar at the age of 90. Over seven decades, Marcial de Gomar built a career that took him from Colombia’s emerald mines to Key West’s Duval Street, from the treasures of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha to the discovery of one of the rarest documented star emeralds. Along the way, he became a familiar figure to collectors, gemologists, and anyone with a serious interest in emeralds.
Sometimes an entire career can turn on something as simple as where you happen to sit on an airplane.
In 1955, 19-year-old Manuel Marcial de Gomar was aboard a flight to Colombia when he found himself sitting beside a mining executive on his way to take over the administration of the Chivor emerald mine.
The man didn’t speak Spanish. But Manuel did.
By the time the flight was over, Manuel had a job as his interpreter.
That chance encounter took Manuel into Colombia’s emerald country for the first time — and began a relationship with emeralds that would define the next seven decades of his life.
Manuel Joseph Marcial de Gomar died on July 23, 2026, surrounded by his family. He was 90 years old.
Marcial de Gomar was born September 13, 1935, in Newark, New Jersey, to parents of Spanish descent. His family moved to Colombia in 1947. After his parents separated, Marcial de Gomar returned to the United States, living first with his grandparents in St. Petersburg, Florida, and later on his own in Miami before joining the U.S. Coast Guard.
along with the Tears of Fura – Colombian emerald pear shapes, 95.51 carats total weight.
Learning Emeralds at the Source
Manuel didn’t learn emeralds from a textbook. He learned them at the source — immersed in Colombia’s emerald culture, its mining districts and mining communities. He learned emeralds from the ground up. As Martin Fuller, McLean, Virginia gemologist appraiser puts it, “He spoke the language and lived with the people.”
After his introduction to Chivor, he struck out on his own, securing exploration permits from Colombia’s Ministry of Mines and spending six years exploring the Gachalá–Somondoco–Chivor region along the Guavio River — traveling on foot and horseback and working directly with miners and local communities.
Those years became the foundation for everything that followed.
Manuel went on to become an emerald wholesaler, consultant, jeweler and designer. In 1964, he opened Emeralds of Colombia Ltd. in Freeport, Bahamas. In 1969, he moved to Lahaina, Hawaii, where he established Emeralds International.
There was another stop before Key West. While continuing to operate Emeralds International in Lahaina, Manuel moved to Deming, Washington, where he bred Paso Fino horses — the same breed he had ridden in the Colombian mountains. According to his son-in-law Carl Schutze, Manuel’s fondness for the warm Caribbean waters, and childhood memories of traveling with his parents by ferry to Cuba, eventually drew him back south.
In 1980, Emeralds International came to Key West.
For more than four decades, the Duval Street store served as Manuel’s home base and became a destination for people interested in emeralds — whether they arrived intending to buy one or simply wanting to know more about them.
Mel Fisher and the Atocha
One day, Mel Fisher walked into Manuel’s Duval Street showroom with a problem.
According to Carl, Fisher told him he needed help with the “green stones” his team was pulling from the ocean floor.
For an emerald man, it was quite an assignment.
The stones were among the treasures recovered from the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, the Spanish galleon that sank off the Florida Keys in 1622 carrying a cargo that included Colombian emeralds.
Manuel was selected as the independent appraiser of the emeralds recovered from the wreck. His years in Colombia gave him firsthand familiarity with Colombian material, and he became particularly interested in what the stones themselves could reveal about their origins and history.
Writing later in The Tears of Fura, Manuel put it this way:
“More importantly to me, the Atocha contained other secrets that could only be revealed by the emeralds.”
— The Tears of Fura, p. 258
His involvement continued well beyond the initial appraisal. Manuel served on the board of the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society and researched Spanish shipwrecks and emerald cargoes at the Archive of the Indies in Seville.
According to Manuel and Emeralds International, microscopic marine material found on the emeralds became important evidence supporting their shipwreck provenance when questions were raised about whether modern emeralds could have been deliberately “salted” on the sea floor.
Fuller recalls Manuel’s work more specifically: “Through his extensive microscopic observations he made the association of the appearance of microscopic fossils, known as foraminifera, in emeralds that had been lost for hundreds of years on the bottom of the ocean.” According to Fuller, those observations helped Manuel distinguish genuine salvaged emeralds from stones deliberately placed on the sea floor to acquire the appearance of shipwreck material.
“It was definitely one of the highlights of his career,” says Fuller, “and he was very proud of his association with Mel Fisher.”
Manuel’s underwater interests extended beyond the Atocha. He dived on seven wrecks in Colombia’s San Bernardo Archipelago and discovered the underwater site of an ancient Carib village.
Emeralds International
Visitors walking into Emeralds International weren’t necessarily going to get a conventional jewelry-store experience.
Manuel loved to talk about emeralds. And people listened.
Where did the emeralds come from? How were they mined? What were the inclusions inside the gem? What was their history? Who were the people who found them?
Sharing what he knew became an important part of his reputation.
Carl remembers that Manuel’s philosophy was simple:
“Educate the public so they knew more about emeralds and conch pearls than when they walked in.”
And it didn’t matter whether someone was spending $100,000 or $100. Carl remembers Manuel taking particular pleasure in talking with young rockhounds who wandered into the showroom, sometimes giving them a piece of emerald rough as a souvenir. Years later, some returned as adults — and even commissioned their wedding rings from the family business.
Manuel lectured at the Gemological Institute of America, the American Society of Appraisers, the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers, museums and universities.
And emeralds weren’t his only specialty. He also developed considerable knowledge of Queen conch pearls, another gem material closely associated with the Caribbean.
A Difficult Chapter — and a Personal Note
Manuel’s career wasn’t without some very difficult moments.
I reported on one of them for JCK Magazine: Bad Appraising Lands Good Jeweler in Court.
It was in the late 1990s, and Manuel found himself facing criminal charges stemming from the wear of an emerald ring and the subsequent appraisals.
For those who appraise jewelry — and those who buy and sell emeralds — the case became an important lesson in what can happen when caring for an emerald goes unheeded, the intended use of an appraisal isn’t accurately determined, and when subsequent damage to a gemstone becomes part of the dispute.
The State used two appraisals in pressing the case against Manuel. Both had been prepared for retail replacement purposes, and not for a retrospective assessment of damage. Manuel retained gemologist-appraiser Bill Hoefer as his expert witness and trial consultant.
The case went to trial.
After just 35 minutes of deliberation, the jury acquitted Manuel.
By then, however, the ordeal had taken years and cost him nearly $200,000 in his defense.
Fuller remembers how deeply it affected him. “He was a jeweler’s jeweler, with great pride in his work and his reputation. To be accused of a crime against your own customers, and to have your reputation impugned in public is devastating.”
The Marcial de Gomar Collection
Later in his career, Manuel assembled a collection representing decades of buying, studying and collecting unusual gems.
The Marcial de Gomar Collection included Colombian emeralds, Queen conch pearls, American red beryl, historical artifacts, an important collection of rough and cut Atocha emeralds, and the unusual double-sided Star Emerald.
Among its highlights was La Gloria, an 887-carat rough emerald from Colombia’s Muzo mine, named for Gloria Fletcher, the attorney who represented Manuel in the Florida trial.
Much of the collection was offered by Guernsey’s in 2017.
The Tears of Fura
Manuel eventually wrote about his experiences in The Tears of Fura, named for Fura and Tena, the twin mountain peaks associated with the Muzo creation story.
It isn’t simply a book about emeralds. It moves through Colombia, mining, history, shipwrecks, family and Manuel’s own experiences — frequently wandering into his thoughts about religion and spirituality.
Manuel was a spiritual man, and The Tears of Fura makes frequent reference to the faith and spirituality through which he viewed his life, nature and the emeralds that occupied so much of it.
That wasn’t confined to the book. Manuel and his wife, Inge, had been members of the Bahá’í Faith since 1969, and he served in a number of Bahá’í organizations during his life.
Yet for all the places The Tears of Fura travels — geographically, historically and spiritually — it keeps coming back to emeralds.
Manuel perhaps summed it up best himself:
“My life, my work and my writings are all involved in the world of emeralds.”
— The Tears of Fura, p. 247
He spent more than 70 years mining them, buying them, selling them, appraising them, collecting them, studying them — and, perhaps most of all, talking about them.
In January 2022, Manuel received the International Latino Award at Emeralds International in Key West. Cuervo y Sobrinos marked the occasion with a limited-edition Churchill “Marcial de Gomar” watch.
Its dial, appropriately enough, was emerald green.
Manuel is survived by his wife of 62 years, Inge; children Michael, Marina, Luciana and Nanea; grandchildren Valeria, Manny, Kylan, Zen, Kalea, Romero and Santi; and son-in-law and protégé Carl Schutze.
It’s difficult to imagine that all of this began with a 19-year-old sitting next to a stranger on an airplane to Colombia and striking up a conversation.
That conversation led Manuel to Chivor and a career that would include emerald mining and exploration, Emeralds International, the Atocha, unusual emerald discoveries and more than 70 years in the gem business.
And all because he happened to sit in the right seat on the right plane. ◈
The Marcial de Gomar Star Emerald
Photo by Robert Weldon
For someone who had spent most of his life looking at emeralds, one stone still managed to surprise Manuel.
The 25.86-carat Marcial de Gomar Star Emerald is an exceptionally rare asteriated emerald fashioned as a double cabochon.
The story began with a parcel of emerald rough from Madagascar brought into Manuel’s Key West showroom. One crystal appeared to show chatoyancy, and Manuel thought it might produce a cat’s-eye. Rather than fashioning the traditional flat-backed cabochon, however, he had the stone cut as a double cabochon.
The finished stone didn’t display an obvious cat’s-eye, and Manuel put it away.
Years later, gemologist-appraiser Martin Fuller was examining the stone while working with Manuel’s collection when they realized they weren’t looking at a cat’s-eye at all.
It was a star.
“What do you say when, after a lifetime as a gemologist, you see something you’ve never seen before?” Fuller recalls. “We were dumbstruck, and overjoyed.”
And Manuel?
“Manuel was like a kid in a candy shop. He was tickled green.”
The emerald was subsequently submitted to GIA, which reported on it in Gems & Gemology in 2015. GIA noted that very few asteriated emeralds had previously been documented. Its six- and four-rayed asterism was produced by minute fluid inclusions oriented parallel to the basal plane.
The Carolina Emeralds
In 1999, Manuel found himself involved with another remarkable emerald story — this time not in Colombia, but in Hiddenite, North Carolina.
James Hill had uncovered an emerald-bearing pocket on his property that yielded some 3,000 carats of material, including crystals weighing 70 to 80 carats. Writing about the discovery for JCK Magazine in June 1999, Gary Roskin described the material as showing medium to medium-dark, slightly bluish-green color reminiscent of emeralds from Colombia’s Chivor and Gachalá regions.
Hill had met Manuel in Key West while visiting to see emeralds recovered from the Atocha and subsequently hired him to cut some of the North Carolina material.
Manuel fashioned the first two faceted gems from the recovery: the 3.40-carat Heart of Carolina and the 3.37-carat Princess of Carolina. He also polished a small cabochon. At the time of the 1999 JCK report, those were the only gems that had been cut from the find.
The two stones would later become associated with a group known as the “Royal Family” of Carolina emeralds, which also included the Queen of Carolina and Prince of Carolina.
