Uncle Sam (diamond)

Common card · No. 273475

Uncle Sam is the nickname for the largest diamond ever discovered in the United States. It was found in 1924 in Murfreesboro, Arkansas, at the Prairie Creek pipe mine, which later became known as the Crater of Diamonds State Park. The diamond was named "Uncle Sam" after the nickname of its finder, Wesley Oley Basham, a worker at the Arkansas Diamond Corporation. The rough diamond as originally discovered weighed 40.23 carats (8.046 g). It was faceted twice by Schenck & Van Haelen of New York, which specialized in Arkansas diamonds, handling over 14,000. The company described those diamonds as being so hard that they could only be cut using powder of other Arkansas diamonds. The final result was a 12.42-carat (2.484 g) emerald-cut gem. It was characterized as M on the diamond color scale; this nominally corresponds to a faint yellow color, but the visual impression of Uncle Sam has been variously described as white or slight pink. Judging from the color, the diamond is most likely of pure...

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