An Arkansas man believes he has found a diamond worth as much as $1 million, extracting a 6.03-carat yellow stone from the eroded surface of a volcanic crater that was converted into a state park more than half a century ago.
Jack Pearadin, a Navy reservist who moved to Murfreesboro from Missouri to be closer to his hobby, was digging with a friend at Crater of Diamonds State Park when they shoveled the gem from the ground, according to reporting by Breitbart and ABC. The park sits about 100 miles southwest of Little Rock.
Pearadin said he did not realize the size of his find until he got home and rinsed the gravel from his bucket in his workshop. He live-streamed the moment on TikTok.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” he said as the stone emerged. “Holy crap, we got a big one!”
Roughly the size of a fingernail, the diamond is the largest found at the park this year, ABC reported.
A $15 Ticket and a 37-Acre Field
Thousands of gem hunters travel to the Murfreesboro park annually, paying $15 a day to fill a bucket with gravel gathered from the grounds. The 37-acre search area is the eroded top of a volcanic crater, and amethysts, garnets, jaspers, agates, quartz, and other minerals occur there naturally.
The park’s website states that more than 37,000 diamonds have been discovered since the former mine became part of the state park system in 1972. Visitors are allowed to keep whatever they find.
Most of those diamonds are small and worth only a few hundred dollars. But the Crater has produced headline-makers before, including the 40.23-carat Uncle Sam, described by the park as the largest diamond ever unearthed in the United States. Other notable finds include the 16.37-carat Amarillo Starlight, the 15.33-carat Star of Arkansas, and the 8.52-carat Esperanza.
The Uncle Sam crystal was cut and polished into a 12.42-carat diamond that was gifted to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where it is displayed in the Great American Diamonds exhibit, ABC reported.
What the Stone Is Actually Worth
Collectors who have seen Pearadin’s diamond have told him it could be worth more than $1 million, according to his account. But not everyone in the trade puts the number that high.
One certified gem appraiser told a news outlet that the stone would typically sell for around $250,000 β a fraction of the seven-figure figure but still a substantial return on a $15 entry fee and 13 years of patience.
Natural diamonds found by hunters tend to be cloudy and irregularly shaped, geologists note. They generally shed about a quarter of their weight during cutting and polishing before they become a finished gem.
Diamonds form under intense heat and pressure deep inside the earth, then are driven toward the surface by volcanic activity and scattered by the elements β the same process that left the Murfreesboro crater peppered with stones for amateur prospectors to find.
For Pearadin, the discovery caps more than a decade of hunting at the same site. He said he relocated to Murfreesboro specifically to pursue the hobby, adding, “I love it that much.”
Whatever the diamond ultimately brings, he plans to split the proceeds with fellow gem hunter Michael Schumacher of Wisconsin, who helped dig the gravel that produced the stone.
Pearadin has already given his find a name. He is calling it the “American Dream.”
Source: www.breitbart.com β https://www.breitbart.com/local/2026/10/02/gem-hunter-finds-6-carat-natural-diamond-arkansas-park-could-be-worth-1-million/