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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Monday was a 49-49-169 saw-off. The TSX Venture Exchange fell seven points to 679 while polished diamond prices inched higher. Eric Friedland's Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. (PGD) gained one-half cent to 16 cents on 1.61 million shares. Tax-loss selling is over but Peregrine's stock has yet to bounce back. Investors may be waiting for the company to begin work on mini-bulk samples of three key pipes at Chidliak, its modest-tonnage, high-grade diamond project on Baffin Island. Paul Gill's Lomiko Metals Inc. (LMR), unchanged at 7.5 cents on 2.96 million shares, is up two cents from its mid-December low of 5.5 cents. Lomiko is getting assays from La Loutre, a graphite project in Quebec. It also intends to spin off its graphene research to a new company.

Chris Taylor's Dunnedin Ventures Inc. (DVI), unchanged at 11 cents on 45,000 shares, plans to "rapidly advance" its Kahuna diamond project south of Rankin Inlet toward feasibility, through additional bulk sampling and resource definition. The company can acquire a 100-per-cent interest in the play from Gary Thompson and Sorin Posescu by issuing another 8.8 million shares and spending $5-million on exploration over four years. Dunnedin need only spend $400,000 in the first year and $1-million in the second, but those modest sums would not qualify as rapid advancement. The Kahuna dike requires a large mini-bulk sample to determine its diamond value. Kahuna averaged one carat per tonne in a test completed in the mid-2000s by the previous owner, Pamela Strand and Julie Lassonde's Shear Diamonds Ltd. (SRM: $0.045).

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