If at first you don’t succeed, try try ... well, you know the rest.
Donald Roden is a Texas native. This was his third trek to the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, the first two visits he went home empty handed.
“I scratched around for about an hour or hour and a half with a little rate and I happened to see it lying there right on top of the ground,” said Roden. "I wasn’t sure what it was, but it felt like it might have been a diamond."
A diamond it was. A brown 6.35-carat diamond – the largest confirmed diamond find at the park since 1998 and the eighth largest since 1972.
“It didn’t really sink in until the people up front got excited over it. They got excited and then I got excited”, said Roden.
The Crater of Diamonds State Park is the world’s only public diamond park, attracting 50,000 visitors per year. The public is allowed to keep any gems found, regardless of value.
“We average about one or two diamond finds per day and per year maybe 500 or 600”, said Rachel Engebrecht of Diamond State Park.
This year, would-be treasure hunters have turned up 345 diamonds and a shocking 75,000 diamonds since 1906. The largest find was in 1924, a white, 40.23 carat, nicknamed Uncle Sam and estimated in the millions of dollars. However, the majority of the diamond finds at the park weigh in a 1/5th of a carat. A few days before Donald’s find, Melissa Lacey of Knoxville, Tennessee, dug up a 1.3 carat yellow diamond estimated at $20,000.
“This has been a very good year for large diamonds. We have had several that have been 2 carats in weight or more”, said Engebrecht.
A good year indeed, for the park and a very good day for Donald. Tiffany and Company tells us a 6.35 brown carat diamond, depending on its clarity, could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
What will Donald be doing with his few found treasure?
“It’s gonna be for sale”, said Roden.
