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by Will Purcell

The critical and specialty minerals box score for Tuesday was a horrid 42-145-123 as the TSX Venture Exchange slumped 42 points to 1,076. Star Diamond Corp. (DIAM) continues to be as newsless as a parliament prorogued for summer. Its last news came in November, but it should have something to say soon: The clock is ticking on the 90-day deadline for its annual report. Star remained chained to its recent perch, dipping one-half cent to 3.5 cents on 1.24 million shares today.

Terry Tucker's Southstone Minerals Ltd. (SML), last at one cent when it was halted late in 2023, is doing better with its little alluvial diamond mine at Oena, along the Orange River in northwesternmost South Africa. The company was sufficiently pleased with its performance that it jumped the gun by a day, applauding its second quarter sales before the quarter officially ended. (No matter: Its final sale of the quarter was already complete.)

Southstone and its contractor sold 1,390.4 carats during the quarter, a 55-per-cent improvement over the previous quarter. Better yet, they averaged $2,671 (U.S.) per carat, handily above the $2,122 (U.S.) per carat that the mine managed in the previous quarter. The bulk of the cash came from 22 specials -- gems weighing at least 10.8 carats -- that were sold in the latest quarter. Those diamonds accounted for $2.77-million (U.S.) of the revenue, with one of the specials, a 38.25-carat diamond, selling for over $616,000 (U.S.), about $16,111 (U.S.) per carat.

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