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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Tuesday was a ho-hum 49-53-159. The TSX Venture Exchange fell fractionally to 998 while diamond prices were flat. Lukas Lundin's Lucara Diamond Corp. (LUC) jumped nine cents to $2.83 on 1.42 million shares. Lucara, which has had a sparkling year at its Karowe diamond mine in Botswana, will release its second quarter results on Wednesday. Investors expect good news based on production and auction results. Paul Gill's Lomiko Metals Inc. (LMR) closed unchanged at six cents on 1.58 million shares. Lomiko's stock has returned to form after a brief surge late last year carried it as high as 18.5 cents. That was when Mr. Gill was spicing his promotion with talk of graphene. Lately he has been touting exploration at Lomiko's Quatre Milles deposit in Quebec, where the company has 23 anomalies needing a closer look.

Eric Friedland's Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. (PGD) fell two cents to 41 cents on 45,000 shares. The company will pay for a big bulk sample of three pipes at Chidliak, on southeastern Baffin Island, with a big rights offering. The size and the pricing for the offering are not set but Peregrine is assured of raising what it needs. Mr. Friedland and his two key backers, Robert Friedland's Newstar Securities and Ned Goodman's Goodman Merchant Capital, will exercise all their rights and any left unexercised by other shareholders. (Eric Friedland currently owns nearly 20 million shares. His older and wealthier brother, Robert, bought 16 million Peregrine in late 2012. He now holds 27 million shares. Mr. Goodman became a shareholder at the same time; he now holds 4.7 million shares.) The rights offering could be a substantial financing as the cost of preparatory work this year and next year's reverse-circulation drilling of CH-6, CH-7 and CH-44 will be about $20-million. The size of the sample is not set in stone but it will be large enough to assess the diamond value of the three pipes with more confidence. CH-6 is the top pipe at Chidliak, averaging just under three carats per tonne and just over $200 (U.S.) per carat, as determined by a 400-tonne mini-bulk sample last year. The other two pipes, CH-7 and CH-44, appear to grade about one carat per tonne and for now, there is no reason to suspect their diamond values vary significantly from CH-6.

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