On Tuesday, retired minister Mack Evans of Diamond, Missouri, found a 4.89-carat diamond at Arkansas’s diamond site, the Crater of Diamonds State Park.  His grayish white diamond was this year’s 176^th diamond find at the park and it’s the largest one so far this year, according to Park Interpreter Margi Jenks.  She said, “Mr. Evans’ diamond is very unique.  It’s is a group of crystals that formed together.”  Jenks noted, “Most diamonds form as a single crystal, but once in a while you’ll see an aggregate—a group like this.”  His 4.89-carat diamond is about the size of a jellybean.
  Mack Evans said that because of his diamond’s unique form, “I didn’t recognize it as a diamond when I saw it caught in my one-quarter-inch screen while wet screening gravel in one of the park’s sluice boxes.”  He continued, “It had that metallic look of diamonds, but I wasn’t convinced it was a diamond because it was so unusual.  So, I almost threw it away.”  “Because it almost got away,” Evans named his metallic, grayish white diamond The Ghost Diamond.

  Evans joked, “It’s so ugly it’s pretty.”  He found his diamond around mid-day in a patch of gravel in an area of the park’s diamond search area called the Pig Pen.  Evans emphasized, “What’s more unique than knowing that yours are the first eyes to see something like this!”

  Evans has visited the park over the past four or five years and has found other diamonds.  Those have been given as special and unique gifts to family members.  This, his largest diamond find, will likely be a gift to a family member, too.

  He said, “Every person ought to do something unique in their life” as he talked about his unique diamond from Arkansas’s diamond site.

  According to Margi Jenks, “This year has been a good one so far for our park visitors.  We’ve seen so many big diamond finds.  Eight diamonds weighed over one carat!”  Mr. Evans’ diamond is the largest.  Currently this year’s second largest is a 3.17-carat yellow diamond found on March 31 by a park visitor from Pennsylvania who visited the park after seeing the diamond design on an Arkansas commemorative quarter.