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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a mediocre 56-55-137. The TSX Venture Exchange gained six points to 1,010 while polished diamond prices held steady. Graeme Rowland's diamond and metals zombie, Adroit Resources Inc. (ADT), closed unchanged at one-half cent on 1.15 million shares. It is seeking a co-venturer for the Temagami-Cobalt property near Lake Timiskaming in Northeastern Ontario. It is a diamond prospect although Mr. Rowland is touting it as prospective for major base and precious metals discoveries." So far, it has not produced much of anything. David Hodge's Commerce Resources Corp. (CCE) gained 2.5 cents to 17.5 cents on 3.18 million shares. There is nothing new to report but there could be soon: Commerce is drilling its Ashram rare earth project in Northern Quebec.

Chad Ulansky and Chuck Fipke's Metalex Ventures Ltd. (MTX: $0.08) is mired in bureaucratic red tape with its planned 10,000-tonne bulk sample of U2 at Kyle Lake in Northern Ontario. As a result it has been busy at Wemindji, east of James Bay in Quebec, where a host of diamond juniors and majors have been exploring since the 1990s. Metalex, always on the prowl for a good story, has been touting Wemindji as a metals play for the past few years. Late in 2012 it staked another 20,000 hectares deemed prospective for gold and base metals, where it collected arrays of surface overburden samples. Recent results from some of those tests have brought diamonds back into focus. Metalex has tracked diamond indicators, including G10 and eclogitic garnets, to a 40-hectare circular lake. The company quietly completed geophysics over the lake to identify drill targets, and it has applied for drill permits. The Wemindji play generated diamond excitement in 2008, when Metalex and the now dormant (if not dead) Dianor Resources Inc. (DOR: $0.01) produced an abundance of microdiamonds from "diamond-bearing conglomerate." (Trying to assess if diamond-bearing conglomerate near Wawa could be economic is what drove Dianor into bankruptcy two years ago.) The spiel at Wemindji centred on the Ekomiak V deposit, which yielded 1,672 diamonds from 923 kilograms of rock, including about 100 rare purple stones. The problem with the Wemindji play, as at Wawa, was that most of the stones were tiny. Only one of the diamonds sat on a 0.85-millimetre sieve, implying a grade in line with most of the Wawa deposits -- about 0.02 carat per tonne. Worse, that one stone was an unimpressive brown. No matter, Mr. Fipke is apparently hunting real kimberlites.

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