Two lucky American tourists discover a rare brown diamond weighing 1.90 carats while visiting a park.
To celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary, Jessica and Seth Erickson, a couple from Chatfield, Minnesota, visited the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, USA. The couple strolled through the park, digging and searching for their fortune. While sifting through the soil, they accidentally found a stone with a very unique color.
Jessica and Seth Erickson with their 1.90-carat brown diamond.
The couple then took the gem to the park’s Diamond Discovery Center. Experts confirmed that it was a rare 1.90-carat brown diamond, with only one found for every 15 million diamonds. This precious stone could potentially be sold for tens of thousands of USD.
Overjoyed by their unexpected fortune, the American couple decided to name the rare diamond HIMO, after their children. “Diamonds over 1 carat make up less than 3% of those ever found in the park. This is an extremely rare discovery,” said Jim Houran, a diamond collector who frequently visits the park.
Crater of Diamonds State Park is located about 95 km east of the Arkansas-Oklahoma border. It is the only public diamond mine in the world where people can hunt for diamonds.
“The park contains lamproite, a type of volcanic rock. Lamproite and kimberlite are common hosts for diamonds. High-velocity eruptions bring material from depths of tens of kilometers to the surface, including diamonds,” explained Nicolas Flament, a geologist and geophysicist at the University of Wollongong.
According to the Crater of Diamonds website, visitors find one or two diamonds in the 15.18-hectare park each day. So far, 581 diamonds were registered in 2022, and more than 33,100 diamonds have been discovered since the park opened in 1972. Uncle Sam, the largest diamond ever found in the U.S. at 40.23 carats, was also discovered in this park in 1924.
“Most diamonds found are small (under 1 carat), so larger diamonds are increasingly rare. The quality and color also vary greatly. Since the volcanic pipe has been fixed in rock, the area has eroded, causing diamonds to scatter.”
“Now it is a park and is periodically plowed to control vegetation and expose new soil,” explained a spokesperson for the Arkansas Geological Survey under the Department of Energy and Environment. Some commercial mining efforts in the area have been made but have all failed.
Therefore, discovering a diamond with such a unique color and size like that of Jessica and Seth Erickson is very rare. “One in a million stones weighs 1 carat, and only one in 15 million is 2 carats,” Flament stated.
