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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Thursday was a lethargic 46-52-163. The TSX Venture Exchange fell three points to 996 while diamond prices inched higher. Dr. Leon Daniels's Pangolin Diamonds Ltd. (PAN) gained two cents to 11 cents on 135,000 shares. The company recently found a tiny microdiamond on one of its Botswana-based diamond properties, but there is still no word about diamonds in Magi, touted as perhaps the world's largest pipe. (Investors now fear it may be the world's largest dud.) Iamgold Inc. (IMG) gained 13 cents to $4.33 on 3.11 million shares. The company lost $16-million in its second quarter but its Niobec niobium mine was again a strong performer.

Randy Turner's Canterra Minerals Corp. (CTM) closed unchanged at 12 cents on 211,000 shares. The company, which recently raised $2-million for exploration, has commenced a summer till sampling program. It hopes to delineate mineral trains on five properties in the South Slave district, properties Mr. Turner touts as being "strategically located" between Snap Lake and Gahcho Kue. (The properties are indeed located between the two rich diamond deposits; the till sampling may determine if Canterra strategically selected them.) Several explorers, including Mr. Turner, spent many millions of dollars chasing diamondiferous kimberlites at the heads of the bounty of indicator trains meandering across the South Slave, rarely with success. Mr. Turner, CEO, says his company is "one of only a few explorers with a proven record of mine discovery and development," although he probably is referring more to his former Winspear Resources Ltd., which discovered Snap Lake in the mid-1990s. (Winspear did the discovering, De Beers did the developing after it paid $500-million to acquire the project in the early 2000s.) Although Canterra will be examining previously explored ground, Mr. Turner expects modern techniques will lead his crew to the elusive pipes.

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