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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Friday was a 62-62-133 draw. The TSX Venture Exchange gained five points to 793 while polished diamond prices were flat. Matt Manson's Stornoway Diamond Corp. (SWY) lost two cents to 82 cents on 7.36 million shares. Today's decline came despite word that the company has just held an "inaugural sale" of polished diamonds from its Renard mine in Quebec. The sale took place in a Birks Group store in Montreal. Birks will also be selling Renard gems later this month in Ottawa and Quebec City; expectant customers elsewhere will apparently have to wait a while longer.

Lukas Lundin and Dr. William Lamb's Lucara Diamond Corp. (LUC), down 10 cents to $3.07 on 925,000 shares, has held its first auction of exceptional diamonds of the year. The gems are from its Karowe mine in Botswana. (Karowe, "precious stone" in a local dialect, has been living up to its name since mining began four years ago. Run of mine production has been beating the feasibility study target and the sales of exceptional diamonds have essentially doubled the mine's revenue each year.) Lucara sold 15 diamonds weighing a total of 1,765.72 carats in the latest tender, grossing a hefty $54.8-million (U.S.), or about $31,000 (U.S.) per carat. (Lucara's total revenue was just $26.1-million (U.S.) in the first quarter of 2017, an average of $401 (U.S.) per carat.)

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