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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Friday was a mediocre 44-56-165 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell fractionally to 994. Polished diamond prices inched lower, continuing a two-month slide. Eric Friedland's Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. (PGD) fell 1.5 cents to 27 cents on 445,000 shares. Peregrine's stock tumbled from 40 cents two weeks ago when it priced its rights offering at 21 cents. Investors, led by stock guru John Kaiser, worry Peregrine's shares will retreat further in the absence of promotable news. Aubrey Eveleigh's Zenyatta Ventures Ltd. (ZEN) closed unchanged at $2.04 on 648,000 shares. The stock dipped to $1.48 Monday amid worries the company was having problems optimizing its graphite purification process at its Albany project in Northern Ontario. It has since rebounded smartly.

Robert Gannicott's Dominion Diamond Corp. (DDC), up 24 cents to $15.09 on 107,000 shares, is planning a bulk sample of its Sable pipe next year. Sable, at the northern end of the rich line of pipes through the core of the main Ekati property, has been in and out of the Ekati mine plan since its former owner, BHP Billiton Ltd., discovered the pipe in the late 1990s. Dominion has been less prone to vacillation since than its predecessor and it plans to spend several million dollars proving Sable can be mined profitably. Mr. Gannicott says Dominion will spend the winter making thick ice over a lake atop Sable, in preparation for reverse circulation drilling set to start in late March or April. The resulting kimberlite cuttings will be processed in the summer and -- assuming a positive grade and valuation result -- Dominion will complete a prefeasibility study of its proposed mining plan. Mr. Gannicott says there will not be a long wait for the study since Sable is a satellite pipe of an existing mine. He says late September, 2015, is a reasonable target.

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