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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Friday was a poor 44-53-164. The TSX Venture Exchange fell fractionally to 995 while diamond prices held steady. Matt Manson's Stornoway Diamond Corp. (SWY) lost one cents to 65 cents on 3.04 million shares. The company is pressing ahead with construction of its Renard mine in Quebec. It is also drilling to expand its resource estimate. Paul Gill's Lomiko Metals Inc. (LMR) gained one cent to 7.5 cents on 7.76 million shares. The company has acquired 1.2 million more shares of Graphene 3D Labs Inc., which is working on a reverse takeover of MatNic Resources Inc. (MIK: $0.10). Investors are bullish when Mr. Gill touts graphene but Lomiko's stock falls when he promotes the Quatre Milles graphite project.

Gary Majerle's Northcore Resources Inc. (NCR: $0.10) has rolled its stock back 1:20 in the hope of making it more attractive. Now, Mr. Majerle is offering five million consolidated shares at a bargain price of five cents. He says the cash is for "corporate cash flow purposes" -- in other words, paying bills, of which it has plenty. (On April 30 the company's current accounts were $275,000 in the red.) As a result Northcore is unlikely to do much exploring this summer on its Attawapiskat diamond property. Northcore has just a 16 per cent in the project, but that could grow, as the majority owner and current operator, Chuck Fipke's Metalex Ventures Ltd. (MTX: $0.085), has apparently given up on the project. Mr. Fipke told Mr. Majerle that Northcore is welcome to become operator and he also warned his minority partner that Metalex will not contribute its 84-per-cent share of any new expenditures. (Mr. Fipke's private company, Kel-Ex Development Ltd., and Shahe Sabag's DNI Metals Inc. (DNI: $0.045) each hold 10-per-cent-carried interests in the play.) It is unclear why Mr. Fipke has lost enthusiasm for what was his favourite hunt in the early 2000s, but there is at least one ominous clue. Metalex completed a $1-million program in the fall of 2010, drilling 10 core holes and 12 auger holes to test an up-ice source of a sample that yielded abundant indicator minerals and bits of kimberlite. A year later, Metalex bought out another junior partner, Patrick Power's Arctic Star Exploration Corp. (ADD: $0.115), acquiring its 16-per-cent interest for a modest cash payment. Since then the drill cores have supposedly been sitting at Mr. Fipke's private laboratory in Kelowna. (If he ever had them processed, he never told Mr. Majerle, Mr. Sabag or his own shareholders.)

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