A tourist visiting the United States, who had a little time to kill before returning to France, was pleased to have made a detour to the Crater of Diamonds in Arkansas where he would have unearthed one of the most big diamonds during his few hours there.
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“I am so happy! The only thing I think about is telling my fiancée what I found,” exclaimed Parisian Julien Navas, 42, holding in his hands the 8th largest diamond unearthed to date. at the Arkansas State Park, according to a news release Saturday.
At the beginning of January, the tourist had initially gone to Florida to attend the launch of the Vulcan Centaur rocket at Cape Canaveral, he said in an interview with Parisian.
But with a little time to kill before returning to France, the amateur gold prospector would then have chosen to make a 1,500 km detour by car, to go to the Crater of Diamonds in Arkansas, an ancient volcano renowned for housing diamonds which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, according to the press release.
Except that after several hours of searching without success in the center of the crater where several were busy with the same activity, a man would have advised him to simply walk around the scene while keeping his eyes open.
It was after three hours that he noticed a small stone on the ground similar to a “quartz, chocolate color”, but more brilliant, he told the Parisian.
By presenting it to the man he met earlier, the latter then confirmed to him that he indeed held a yellow diamond “a little rarer than white diamonds”, which turns out to be 7.46 carats, -he continued.
This would be the 8th largest diamond found on the site since the opening of the park in 1972, when more than 75,000 diamonds would have been unearthed there.
The forty-year-old, who received certification for the diamond last Friday, now hopes to be able to cut the precious stone in two, to separate it between his fiancée’s wedding ring, and give the other to his daughter, currently aged three.
“The whole challenge now is to know how many diamonds we can get out of it. (It will depend) on the fractures or potential impurities that the tailor observed, but also on the purity and the final color,” he concluded at Parisian.
