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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Tuesday was a weak 65-96-141 as the TSX Venture Exchange rose fractionally to 623. Polished diamond prices slipped 0.1 per cent today and are now down 2 per cent since last summer. Michael Fontaine's Albert Mining Inc. (AIIM), a five-center less than two weeks ago, ran as high as 25 cents at the start of March, despite the company saying it had no idea why in response to a regulatory request. Today, it dropped three cents to 14.5 cents on 5.06 million shares. The regulators have not bothered asking again as the rally unravels, leaving the buyers of nearly 100 million shares in nine days to second-guess their purchases.

Ken MacNeill and George Read's perpetual -- but stalled -- diamond promotion, Star Diamond Corp. (DIAM) lost one-half cent to 24.5 cents on 523,000 shares. The stock added 3.5 cents Monday on 878,000 shares after the company said that its Star-Orion South diamond project in central Saskatchewan hosted "significant proportions of Type IIA diamonds." The company says that it examined nearly 5,400 diamonds larger than 0.32 carat from Star, and over one-quarter of them were Type IIA stones. At Orion South, one-eighth of the 1,872 diamonds examined were deemed to be Type IIA stones.

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