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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Thursday was a poor 46-62-139. The TSX Venture Exchange fell one point to 695 while polished diamond prices slipped slightly. Dominion Diamond Corp. (DDC: $23.78) has been on a tear this year and its thin-trading partner on the Buffer claims at Ekati, Stewart Blusson's Archon Minerals Ltd. (ACS), is following suit. Archon, just 95 cents in January, gained 12 cents to $1.60 on 5,000 shares today. The two companies plan to spend $657-million getting their big Jay kimberlite set for mining. Alexander Stewart's Xmet Inc. (XME) fell one-half cent to 3.5 cents on 878,000 shares. The company, currently drilling for gold in Quebec, is considering its next move at Blackflake West, a graphite and possible metals project near Albany in Northern Ontario.

Patrick Power's Arctic Star Exploration Corp. (ADD), unchanged at 5.5 cents on 337,000 shares, expects to sell $1.85-million of five-cent regular shares and six-cent flow-through shares. This is $150,000 more than the $1.7-million it offered in mid-March. The increase is the result of "increased demand," says Mr. Power, president. Just keeping a prospective backer on the phone for a brief pitch is enough to qualify as increased demand these days, but Mr. Power has had previous success with his cash drives. He sought $1.3-million last summer and eventually brought in nearly $1.8-million, although it took three tranches to accomplish.

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