A Woman In Arkansas Found An 8.5 Carat White Diamond While Diggin’ In The Dirt And You Can Too!

Bobbie Oskarson of Longmont, Colorado was visiting Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park with her boyfriend last week when she unearthed an 8.5 carat white diamond from the mud. Over 75,000 diamonds have been dug up at Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park since the fertile diamond mine was first discovered back in 1906, but this is the 5th largest diamond ever found by a park visitor (visitors have been allowed to mine for diamonds since 1972). So far 30 diamonds have been found in the park this year, but Ms. Oskarson’s 8.5-carat white diamond is making headlines because no diamond of this size has been seen in quite some time, she has also named her 8.5-carat diamond the ‘Esperanza Diamond’.

The value of her diamond is not yet clear, but as KTLA points out, a 12.42-carat diamond found at the park in 1972 known as the ‘Uncle Sam Diamond’ was cut twice, and then sold for $150,000 ($880,000 when adjusted for 2015 inflation). Though the Uncle Sam Diamond began as a 40.23-carat diamond, the largest ever found in the park. So this 8.5-carat white diamond found by Bobbie Oskarson could be worth astounding sums of money.

Any of you bros who have never been gem mining don’t know what you’re missing out on. Granted I haven’t been since I was 9 or 10 years old and on vacation with my parents in the Smokey Mountains in North Carolina. My dad did however just dig up my old gem collection from those trips as a kid and proceeded to send me this text (we have the same name, if you’re wondering what’s going on there):

As you can see, we have very in-depth conversations over text message.

From what I’ve gathered, the park itself is broken out into a mining area and an area for visitors to dig through the mud to find diamonds. So far visitors have found 30 diamonds this year, but KTLA is reporting that 227 diamonds have been registered from the park so far in 2015. Suffice it to say the miners are robbing the State Park’s visitors from finding a gigantic diamond. If you’re thinking about taking a trip to Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park to do some diamond mining of your own, here’s a list of famous diamonds found throughout the years at the park, and a link to the site for information on getting there: