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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score on Tuesday was a mediocre 84-107-119 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell four points to 663. Grenville Thomas and Ken Armstrong's North Arrow Minerals Inc. (NAR) closed unchanged at 7.5 cents on 10,000 shares.

Investors have assessed -- but largely ignored -- the complete results of North Arrow's 1,814-tonne bulk test of two lobes of its big Q1-4 kimberlite pipe, less than 10 kilometres north of the costal community of Naujaat, in central Nunavut. That test was designed to flesh out the size distribution profile of the two main diamond populations, fancy orangey-yellow diamonds and all the others -- mainly whites, greys, browns, non-fancy yellows and other colours.

The ho-hum attitude comes despite the company producing significantly greater numbers of fancy diamonds in the latest tests, along with better colour and quality attributes. Nevertheless, probably because there were no huge, top-quality gems, the market is unsure whether the latest test will move the diamond valuation range enough to warrant a larger test, much less make the project economically viable.

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