Immortalized in film by screen siren Marilyn Monroe, it’s a well known fact that diamonds are a girl’s best friend. But are diamonds an investor’s best friend? In the mid-1990s they certainly were when there was a bona fide “diamond rush” in Canada after diamonds were discovered by Dia Met Minerals in Canada’s north. Dia Met Minerals, and its share in the coveted Ekati diamond mine, were later taken-over by BHP Billiton in 2001 for $21 per share. At the time of the buy-out Dia Met Minerals controlled 28% of the Ekati mine and the deal was valued at $687 million. The Ekati mine became Canada’s first diamond-producing mine when it came into production in 1998.

With the success of Dia Met Minerals in the mid-1990s many junior mining companies were launched on the TSX-V Exchange including none other than Diamond Fields Resources, which, although they never found diamonds in Canada, did manage to discover one of the largest Nickel deposits on the planet while they were prospecting in Labrador, Newfoundland. Diamond Fields’ Voisey’s Bay nickel discovery, although somewhat happenstance, is arguably the most significant mineral discovery in Canada in the past 40 years.

But today, the lustre of diamonds has faded and the mining market is dominated by the resurgence of the precious metals, base metals and tech metals. In memory of what once was, we take a trip down nostalgia lane with Marilyn Monroe.

The MiningFeeds.com