Former Apple executive-turned-gem collector Michael Scott talks about the technicalities of stones.

Photos By Steve K. Zylius

As a teen, Michael Scott was taught by his computer teacher to never wear rings, for fear of ruining the early computers’ punch cards.

Scott went on to become president of Apple Computer. After he left in 1981, he started collecting the very things he missed out on — gems.

For his first ring, Scott wanted a green gem. He chose green garnet over emerald, which was more brittle. Before he bought the ring, he got the garnet independently appraised, and found out it was a fake.

Though trained in physics, Scott decided to pick up gemology, and today is as assiduous a researcher as he is a buyer. (And he’s quite a buyer — The Bowers Museum says Scott’s stash is arguably the most important private collection in the United States, with few rivals in the world save royal families.)

The Bowers Museum exhibited Scott’s collection in 2002, and is again showcasing more than 250 gems from his collection.

More than half the gems were shown in the previous exhibition, but the show is laid out differently. Highlights include a 1,730-carat ruby crystal from Myanmar (formerly Burma) and the world’s largest tanzanite (242 carats), set in a white gold tiara with 1,000 diamonds.

Scott lived in Newport Beach from 1965-67, when he worked at Beckman Instruments, but now lives in Los Altos.

What percentage of your collection will be exhibited in “Colors of Light”?
Most of my collection is for research. The exhibition represents less than 20 percent of the number of pieces, but it represents a substantial amount of the value.

What’s your collection estimated to be worth?
Well, let’s just say tens of millions of dollars.

Did your mom, or other people around you, collect jewelry?
No, and very little of my collection is jewelry. The jewelry is there because we want to frame the stones. Most of it is unmounted crystals. There are probably 4,300 types of minerals; of those 4,300, I now have 2,600.

I support the science that documents all of this through the RRUFF Project at the University of Arizona. Basically, we are trying to develop the research for a Tricorder. In “Star Trek,” they had this little gadget, and when they got off a spaceship and pointed it at things, they could figure out what it was. We’re working on something that will be the size of a cell phone, and if you go on a hike or something, you can point it at something and figure out what kind of stone it is.

Another practical application is if law enforcement does a raid, they can figure out what kind of drugs they find. It uses a laser beam to analyze what’s in it without touching it. That’s the technical side of my interest.

The movie “Blood Diamond” created a wave of bad publicity for the diamond industry by showing the brutality of diamond mines. Do you do anything to ensure the gems you get come from places that were mined legally and ethically?
Gemstones are mined off the back of the poor, no matter if they’re diamonds or anything else, in Colombia or Brazil. A lot of officials in different African countries will take gemstones as bribes and store them in bank vaults in Switzerland because you can’t trace the transfer of gems.

Does it bother you that the gems are mined by people who are poor, like you said, and who see only a fraction of the gem’s final price?
That’s part of the whole problem of buying. When I see a gem, it might be owned by a person five removed from me. Every time it passes through the chain, everybody marks it up 10, 20 percent. You can’t tell how far the chain goes down.

My respect goes to the miners because they have to be the most optimistic people in the world. Most of the time, they never find anything of significant value. To me, the one thing I can do is to show the pieces publicly, whereas in history, most of the gemstones have gone to private collections and locked boxes and are never seen again.

Big philanthropy has been in the news recently. Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and Warren Buffett are giving away billions of their money. Have you felt any pressure to donate what you have, instead of buying gems?
I’m donating what I have before I start buying gems. I founded a professorship at Caltech in honor of (Richard) Feynman, who to me was my teacher and mentor, and a recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics. I’ve made a major contribution to the Seattle Opera, where Bill Gates doesn’t donate. There’s the RRUFF project I’m funding, and I’ve done other stuff. For museums, I’ve given cash donations.