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Pic credit: Jack Pearadin/ AP
Jack Pearadin, a Navy reservist originally from Missouri, has been hunting diamonds at Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park since 2013. Over the years, he has unearthed more than 300 gems.
But this time, when his shovel hit the gravel, he spotted something different. After rinsing the gravel and tipping it onto a table, he noticed a yellow crystal about the size of a fingernail catching the light. His TikTok livestream was still on, and this rock was a 6.03-carat diamond!‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ Pearadin said during the livestream. ‘Holy cr*p, we got a big one!’ he yelled.It turns out it is the largest diamond found this year at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas.
For Pearadin, it is unlike anything he has dug up before. Talking to the AP, he claimed the diamond could be worth $1 million.
A hobby that is yet to pay off
Gem hunting may seem like a rewarding career. But Pearadin is the first to admit his hobby has not paid off. Over a dozen years, he has sifted through the rocks, and the field where this stone turned up has already given him more than 300 gems.Originally from Missouri, he first tried his luck at the park in 2013 and later moved to nearby Murfreesboro to stay close to it.
‘I love it that much,’ he told the outlet. Most of the diamonds he found were sold online.This one came out of the ground with help. Pearadin and his friend Michael Schumacher of Wisconsin shovelled it from the field together, and Schumacher helped fill the bucket that held the stone. Pearadin has named the diamond the ‘American Dream’.
A diamond worth $1 million
Pearadin thinks this new diamond he unearthed would fetch him $1 million. At least, that’s what some of the collectors told him.
Appraisers are more cautious. At least one experienced appraiser told the news agency that a stone of this size and quality might be worth a quarter of that.Laura Stanley, a certified gem appraiser in Little Rock, said a high-quality six-carat yellow diamond from the park can sell for about $250,000. According to her, the park’s name is part of the reason. ‘They are their own entity. It’s the only place in America where you can go find your own diamond and you can’t compare that to a diamond from anywhere else,’ Stanley said.For some context, a typical 0.17-carat diamond from the park sells for around $700, Stanley said.Cutting will change the stone, too. Natural diamonds tend to be cloudy and oddly shaped, and they lose about 25% of their weight when cut and polished, Nathan Renfro, senior manager at the Gemological Institute of America, told AP.
A $15 fee to find diamonds
The park charges $15 to fill a five-gallon bucket with rocks, and visitors keep any gemstones they find.
Most of these finds are small and worth maybe a few hundred dollars. More than 37,000 diamonds have been discovered by gem hunters since the former open-pit mine became a state park in 1972.In a year, usually about 400 to 800 diamonds turn up, and most weigh about a quarter of a carat, according to park interpreter Sarah Bivens. Bigger ones are rare. Park assistant superintendent Waymon Cox revealed that a nine-carat diamond was found in 2020 by an Arkansas bank manager and a seven-carat stone was unearthed in 2024 by a French man.The biggest record belongs to Uncle Sam, a 40.23-carat crystal found in 1924, the largest diamond ever unearthed in the United States. It was cut into a 12.42-carat gem and gifted to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where it hangs in the ‘Great American Diamonds’ exhibit.Today, Arkansas’ park is one of the only places in the world where anyone can hunt for diamonds and take their finds with them. ‘It’s a pretty remarkable operation that that’s available to the public,’ Renfro said.
‘Most diamond mines are super high security.’Pearadin, on the other hand, has named his latest find the ‘American Dream’. ‘It’s just this massive, gorgeous yellow diamond,’ he said. The seasoned gem hunter plans to split the profits with his fellow hunter, Michael Schumacher of Wisconsin.
