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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a bleak 37-77-143. The TSX Venture Exchange fell 11 points to 674 while polished diamond prices edged lower. There is no news, but Nicholas Houghton's True North Gems Inc. (TGX) dipped to a 9.5-cent low before closing at 10 cents on 3.69 million shares, well off its 20-cent high of last fall. The company is building a ruby and sapphire mine at Aappaluttoq, in Greenland.

Eric Friedland and Tom Peregoodoff's Peregrine diamonds Ltd. (PGD), down one-half cent to 17.5 cents on 602,000 shares, is drilling its Sikwane diamond project in Botswana. The $140,000, 500-metre program is certain to hit kimberlite as the five targets are previously drilled pipes, selected from the nine that De Beers discovered 20 years ago. The drilling is designed to "resolve the kimberlite-granite relationships" -- something that might excite geologists, but few others -- and to collect kimberlite samples for microdiamond and kimberlite indicator mineral analysis -- something that might excite investors if all goes well.

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