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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Friday was a positive 46-38-152. The TSX Venture Exchange gained seven points to 499 while polished diamond prices were flat. Lukas Lundin's Lucara Diamond Corp. (LUC) gained another nine cents to $2.30 on 315,000 shares. There has been no word about any sale of the two huge diamonds that the company recovered last fall at Karowe, its lucrative mine in Botswana. The company said there was no pressure to rush a sale of the 1,111-carat diamond it recovered in mid-November, or the 813-carat stone that turned up a day later. Tom Hodgson and Jay Chmelauskas's Western Lithium USA Corp. (WLC) gained two cents to 42 cents on 854,000 shares. The company has been quiet since it merged with Mr. Hodgson's Lithium Americas Corp. last fall.

Nicholas Houghton's True North Gems Inc. (TGX), down one-half cent to 16.5 cents on 98,000 shares, has an offtake deal with Chinastone Inc. Chinastone has agreed to buy a minimum of $7-million (U.S.) in rough rubies and sapphires from True North's Aappaluttoq mine in western Greenland over a three-year period. The Aappaluttoq gems will be made available to Chinastone five times per year, with the selling price to be based on the "fair market value" -- whatever that is. (The market for rubies and sapphires is murky at best, and True North may not know for sure what the Aappaluttoq gems will fetch until it starts selling them.)

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