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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Tuesday was a weak 77-119-114 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell fractionally to 581. Patrick Power and Buddy Doyle's Arctic Star Exploration Corp. (ADD) was unchanged at three cents on 1.28 million shares. On Monday, Arctic nosedived 1.5 cents to three cents on 13.57 million shares, thudding to an unstarlike 2.5 cents at one point on the heels of long-awaited diamond counts from the Sequoia kimberlite. Sequoia had been the flagship find on the Diagras property, just northeast of the rich Diavik and Misery kimberlites at Lac de Gras.

Mr. Power, president and chief executive officer, says that 1.65 tonnes of Sequoia kimberlite that Arctic Star recovered from a six-hole drill program last spring -- yes, the counts have been that long in coming -- produced 1,003 diamonds larger than a 0.106-millimetre sieve, about 610 diamonds per tonne. That was disappointing, as a 505-kilogram batch collected last year averaged about 950 gems per tonne, but finding 35 per cent fewer microdiamonds per tonne than a year ago was just the opening salvo against Arctic Star's foundering flagship.

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