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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Friday was a discouraging 44-73-146. The TSX Venture Exchange slumped 16 points to 967 while polished diamond prices were flat. Nicholas Houghton's True North Gems Inc. (TGX) hit a two-year high of 13 cents today, closing up 1.5 cents to 11 cents on 677,000 shares. The stock, just four cents a year ago, has been rallying as Mr. Houghton pushes the company's Aappaluttoq project toward permitting and construction. He still needs $15-million for the $40-million project. Kieran Downes's Troymet Exploration Corp. (TYE) gained one cents to two cents on 4.73 million shares. Troymet, usually a thin trader, had no news to account for the interest. The company's chart shows two similar spurts in trading, both followed by news. Troymet has a few precious metals plays and the Thelon rare earth and uranium prospect, northwest of Baker Lake.

Dr. Leon Daniels and Dr. Willem Smuts's Pangolin Diamonds Corp. (PAN) closed unchanged at 23 cents on 12,000 shares. The wait continues for diamond counts from core taken from the massive Magi kimberlite on the company's Tsabong North property in Botswana. Dr. Daniels frequently touts the mineral chemistry of Magi and its surroundings and he gushes over the pipe's mammoth dimensions. He has said nothing about diamonds, something that has not gone unnoticed by investors. Pangolin's initial promotion of Magi carried its stock to 53 cents from its usual 20-cent perch. It has since found its way home. Pangolin did process some drill core but for indicators, not diamonds, and that was in the discovery hole nearly a year ago. Further, the 570 grams of rock was not kimberlite; it was "glauconitic fine-grained sandstone" -- those words apparently means something to geologists -- that lies atop the pipe. Dr. Daniels gushed over Pangolin's haul of 45 garnets from that sample, saying he had never seen a higher concentration. He geologically compared Magi with the M1 pipe found near Tsabong in the early 1980s. (He might consider another peer comparison. M1, now called MK1, was tested for diamonds eventually. Tests produced both macrodiamonds and microdiamonds, resulting in grade projections of perhaps 0.2 carat per tonne, but the results were apparently insufficient for development.) Despite the snail's pace, Dr. Daniels, chairman, still promises to send core samples from Magi and its other big pipe, Marten, for microdiamond recovery.

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