A US gem hunter has found a 6.03-carat yellow diamond at Arkansas’s Crater of Diamonds State Park, describing the discovery as his “American dream”.
Navy reservist Jack Pearadin and his friend Michael Schumacher dug the stone from a field at the park, where Pearadin says he has found more than 300 gems since beginning his search in 2013.
Pearadin said collectors had told him the diamond could be worth up to $1m (£750,000). However, certified gem appraiser Laura Stanley told the Associated Press that a high-quality six-carat yellow diamond could be worth about $250,000, partly because of its origin. The final value has not been established.
Pearadin named the stone the American Dream. He livestreamed the discovery on TikTok, shouting: “Oh my God! Oh my God!” after rinsing gravel from a bucket and finding the diamond’s shiny facets.
The stone is roughly the size of a fingernail and is the largest diamond found at the park this year. More than 37,000 diamonds have been discovered there since a former open-pit mine became a state park in 1972.
Visitors pay $15 (£11) to search through a five-gallon bucket of rocks and can keep any gemstones they find. The park records between 400 and 800 diamond finds annually, most weighing about a quarter of a carat, according to park interpreter Sarah Bivens.
The largest diamond found in the United States was the 40.23-carat Uncle Sam, discovered at the park in 1924. It was later cut and polished into a 12.42-carat stone that is displayed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
Pearadin said he plans to split any profits from the American Dream with Schumacher and open his own crystal mine.
