Arkansas gem hunter says he found what may be a $1 million diamond

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Jack Pearadin is the first to admit that his diamond-hunting hobby hasn't paid off, despite sifting rocks for more than a dozen years.

But earlier this year, the Navy reservist and his friend shoveled a six-carat diamond from a field in Arkansas where he's found over 300 gems so far. And this one was like nothing he's dug up before — Pearadin claims collectors have told him it could be worth over $1 million.

At least one experienced appraiser told The Associated Press that a diamond of such size and quality could be worth a fourth of that — still an impressive find.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Pearadin said as he livestreamed the discovery on TikTok. “Holy crap, we got a big one!” he yelled after rinsing gravel from a bucket and then flipping the pile onto a table to expose the shiny facets of a 6.03-carat diamond.

Roughly the size of a fingernail, it’s the largest diamond found this year at Crater of Diamonds State Park. More than 37,000 diamonds have been discovered since the former open-pit diamond mine became part of a state park in 1972.

The park charges a $15 entry fee to fill a 5-gallon bucket with rocks, and people can keep any gemstones they find. Most are small and worth maybe a few hundred dollars. The largest diamond ever unearthed in the United States, a 40.23-carat stone called the Uncle Sam , was found at the park in 1924.

Pearadin, originally from Missouri, has been trying his luck at the park since 2013, even moving to nearby Murfreesboro to support his hobby — “I love it that much,” he told The Associated Press. He's sold most of his diamonds online.

Most of the 400 to 800 diamonds found at the park annually weigh about a quarter of a carat, according to park interpreter Sarah Bivens. But there have been some bigger ones, said park assistant superintendent Waymon Cox: In 2020 a 9-carat diamond was found by an Arkansas bank manager, and in 2024 a French man unearthed a 7-carat diamond .

Diamonds are crystallized under tremendous pressure and heat deep inside the Earth and then thrust to the surface through volcanic activity before they’re scattered by water or wind. These natural diamonds are often cloudy and oddly shaped, and lose about 25% of their weight as they're cut and polished into what a jeweler would sell, according to Nathan Renfro, senior manager at the Gemological Institute of America.

Renfro said the U.S. has only two known primary deposits of diamonds — places where columns of once-molten volcanic rock have reached the surface — Crater of Diamonds and Colorado’s Kelsey Lake, where the land was reclaimed after a commercial mining operation went out of business years ago.

Today, that leaves the Arkansas park as one of the only places in the world where anyone can hunt for diamonds and take their finds with them.

“It’s a pretty remarkable operation that that’s available to the public,” Renfro said. “Most diamond mines are super high security.”

A typical .17-carat diamond from the park can sell for around $700, said certified gem appraiser Laura Stanley in Little Rock. But a high-quality six-carat yellow diamond from the park can sell for about $250,000, she said, partly because of their origin.

“They are their own entity,” Stanley said. “It’s the only place in America where you can go find your own diamond and you can’t compare that to a diamond from anywhere else.”

The Uncle Sam crystal was cut and polished into a 12.42-carat diamond gifted to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where it's on view in the “Great American Diamonds” exhibit.

Pearadin named his latest and biggest find the “American Dream.”

“It’s just this massive, gorgeous yellow diamond,” Pearadin said. He plans to split the profits with fellow gem hunter Michael Schumacher of Wisconsin, who helped dig the gravel that produced the stone, and open his own crystal mine.

Turbay is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.