Kentucky Man Discovers Another Rock at Crater of Diamonds

Another huge diamond has been found at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas. Perhaps we should start calling the Crater of Diamonds State Park the new Las Vegas! Just throw your shovel out there and see where it lands. Some will win and some will lose.

The last extremely large diamond found at the Crater of Diamonds State Park was a 3.85 ct. teardrop shaped yellow diamond worth $20,000. It was found by a 14 year teenager in October of 2013.

Just five short months later, an even larger diamond has been found. This time a 6.19 ct white diamond found by David Anderson who quickly named it the Limitless Diamond. The name for this diamond was in honor of the charity Speed the Light and all proceeds from the diamond will be given to that organization.

The Limitless Diamond is the size of a small jelly bean and it’s the 15th largest diamond that’s been found at the Crater of Diamonds State Park since 1972. This latest diamond is completely clear and looks to be an unbroken crystal.

The largest diamond ever found in the United States is called the Uncle Sam diamond and it was discovered at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in 1924. It was an astonishing 40.23 ct. white diamond. This diamond was only cut twice. The second cut produced a 12.42 ct emerald-cut gem.

The Uncle Sam diamond is not the only famous diamond found at this park. The Strawn-Wagner diamond, which is on permanent display at the visitors center, was the most perfect diamond ever certified by the American Gem Society. It was graded a perfect O/O/O, Ideal cut/D color/flawless. Also known as Triple Zero. That’s the highest possible grade a diamond can achieve.

A diamond that’s this perfect is so rare that almost no one in the jewelry industry will ever see one in their entire career. The Strawn-Wagner diamond was found by Shirley Strawn in 1990 and it weighed 3.03 ct. Just to give you an idea of how rare this type of diamond is – it’s estimated to only occur one time in a billion and it’s even more rare that it came from a non-commercial diamond mine.

The Strawn-Wagner diamond was handcrafted by Underwood’s Fine Jewelers in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The mounting is pure platinum and pure 24-karat gold with two gold apple blossoms on each side of the crown to represent The Arkansas state flower.

Lazare Kaplan was the master crafter who cut this precious gem into a 1.09 ct. round brilliant shaped diamond featuring an “Ideal Cut.” This type of cut was used to allow the maximum amount of light to be reflected from one facet to the other and up through the top.

A common misconception about the Crater of Diamonds State Park is that, after a century, the park is all played out. Which seems to make sense. However, the facts just don’t backup that assumption. The number of finds in the Crater of Diamonds State Park are directly related to the number of visitors by a ratio and that has not changed much in the last 50 years.

Who knows how long this trend will last or who the next success story will be. What we do know is that the Crater of Diamonds State Park is “the” place to be if you want to go digging for diamonds.