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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Tuesday was a mediocre 68-65-124. The TSX Venture Exchange rose three points to 800 while polished diamond prices edged lower. Lukas Lundin's Lucara Diamond Corp. (LUC) lost eight cents to $3.03 on 580,000 shares. The company is on track for another solid year at its Karowe mine in Botswana.

Ken MacNeill and George Read's Shore Gold Inc. (SGF) slid 9.5 cents to 34 cents on 3.69 million shares after it said it was working on a deal regarding its mammoth Star-Orion South diamond project in central Saskatchewan. Shore's stock, mired near the 20-cent mark for the past three years, broke free of its chains a month ago. The rally gained strength late in May and the stock leapt as high as 44 cents on Monday, prompting the regulators to ask the company what was up, besides the shares.

Mr. MacNeill, president and chief executive officer, and Mr. Read, executive vice-president, say that "Shore is engaged in preliminary discussions regarding a potential transaction with a third party involving an earn-in on Shore's mineral properties." That concept was the one of the worst-kept secrets in the diamond sector this spring, given the northward spurt by Shore's stock and the blizzard of posts from retail shareholders speculating about an imminent deal. Curiously, many of those same retail shareholders were skeptical of Shore's news, pointing out the empty calories offered by the company's side dish of adjectival fudge in its news about the talks.

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