An Arkansas gem hunter unearthed a 6-carat yellow diamond he nicknamed the American Dream, a stone collectors have told him could be worth $1 million.
Jack Pearadin, a Navy reservist who has hunted gems at Crater of Diamonds State Park since 2013, filled a five-gallon bucket with gravel earlier this year beside fellow hunter Michael Schumacher of Wisconsin. They rinsed the load, flipped the pile onto a table, and stared at a 6.03-carat yellow stone roughly the size of a fingernail.
Pearadin livestreamed the moment on TikTok. The find is the largest diamond recovered at the park this year, and he named it the “American Dream.” News4Jax reported his claim that collectors have put the value as high as $1 million.
He did not hide his reaction on the stream.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!”
And then:
“Holy crap, we got a big one!”
Pearadin later described the stone in plain terms: “It’s just this massive, gorgeous yellow diamond.”
Crater of Diamonds State Park sits in southwest Arkansas near Murfreesboro. It was once an open-pit mine. In 1972 it became a state park that lets visitors keep what they find. The entry fee is $15 for a five-gallon bucket of dirt and gravel.
More than 37,000 diamonds have turned up there since the park opened. Park interpreter Sarah Bivens says 400 to 800 diamonds surface each year, and most weigh about a quarter of a carat. Many sell for only a few hundred dollars.
Bigger stones still appear. Park assistant superintendent Waymon Cox pointed to a 9-carat diamond found by an Arkansas bank manager in 2020 and a 7-carat stone recovered by a French visitor in 2024. The park’s record remains the 40.23-carat “Uncle Sam,” found in 1924, later cut to 12.42 carats, and now held by the Smithsonian.
Pearadin started coming in 2013. He later moved from Missouri to nearby Murfreesboro so he could keep at it. He has pulled more than 300 gems from the field and sold most of them online. He is the first to say the hobby has not made him rich.
“I love it that much,” he said.
Independent voices put a cooler number on the stone. At least one experienced appraiser told the Associated Press a diamond of this size and quality could be worth about a fourth of $1 million. Certified Little Rock gem appraiser Laura Stanley was more specific: a high-quality six-carat yellow diamond from the park can sell for about $250,000, partly because of its American origin. A typical.17-carat park stone, she said, goes for around $700.
The New York Post likewise noted Stanley’s roughly $250,000 range while reporting Pearadin’s higher collector talk and his plan to split any profit with Schumacher.
Stanley stressed what makes park diamonds different.
“They are their own entity. 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.”
Nathan Renfro, a senior manager at the Gemological Institute of America, added the practical limits. Natural diamonds are often cloudy or oddly shaped and lose about 25 percent of their weight when cut and polished. The United States has only two known primary diamond deposits, Crater of Diamonds and Colorado’s Kelsey Lake, which was reclaimed after commercial mining ended.
Renfro called the public setup unusual.
“It’s a pretty remarkable operation that that’s available to the public. Most diamond mines are super high security.”
Pearadin plans to divide the proceeds with Schumacher, who helped fill the bucket that held the stone. He also wants to use his share to open his own crystal mine. That is the working man’s version of the name he gave the diamond: put in the years, take the risk, and try to build something that lasts.
No lab grade for color and clarity beyond the “yellow” and 6.03-carat labels has been released publicly. No absolute calendar date for the dig appears in the available accounts, only that it happened earlier this year. The core facts do not need polish. A reservist and his friend paid the park fee, shoveled gravel, and walked out with the largest diamond found there this year.
In a country that still lets ordinary people keep what they dig out of the ground for the price of a lunch tab, the American Dream remains something you can chase with a bucket and a strong back.
