By handling an object, the wizard can determine the current or previous owner's race, class or profession, alignment, and possibly his fate. These can be determined with 95% accuracy; failure results in no reading.
The owner's fate is not revealed past the moment he lost possession of the item or died in its immediate vicinity; for example, if the previous owner dropped his hat while being kidnapped, reading the hat tells the wizard nothing about the owner's current location. The caster has a 5% chance per level of determining a command word associated with a magical object. If the item is an artifact or relic, the DM decides what information, if any, is learned. If the object has a particularly tragic or legendary history, the caster is 30% likely to experience a vision of the item's past.
The material component of the spell is an incense of rare aromatics costing no less than 100 gp.
Notes: Uncommon for diviners and mentalists; otherwise, rare. (Updated from Polyhedron Magazine).