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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a weak 43-50-154. The TSX Venture Exchange gained one point to 693 while polished diamond prices jumped 1 per cent. Leni Keough's Olivut Resources Ltd. (OLV) closed unchanged at 10 cents on 101,000 shares. Olivut dropped its peripheral diamond plays to concentrate on HOAM, south of Great Bear Lake, but it is now marking time there until it can raise cash for drilling. Aubrey Eveleigh's Zenyatta Ventures Ltd. (ZEN) gained 10 cents to $2.51 on 445,000 shares. Zenyatta's heavily promoted but much delayed dream sheet for its Albany graphite project should be out soon.

Lukas Lundin and Dr. William Lamb's Lucara Diamond Corp. (LUC), up one cent to $2.15 on 3.09 million shares, earned $6-million (U.S.) on sales of $29.6-million (U.S.) in its first quarter. It might seem disappointing, as Lucara earned $45.7-million (U.S.) on diamond revenues of $266-million (U.S.) in 2014, but its first quarter sales did not include any of the large and valuable gems that produce roughly half of the revenue generated at its Karowe mine in Botswana. That was also the case in the first quarter a year ago, when Lucara reported a $5.1-million (U.S.) profit on sales of $32.8-million (U.S.). Lucara averaged $277 (U.S.) per carat this quarter, down from $305 (U.S.) per carat in the first quarter of 2014. The drop is partly the result of lower rough prices, but it is also the result of the company mining the north lobe of Karowe, where the diamond values are lower.

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