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(CNN) – Noreen Wredberg and her husband, Michael, weren’t really expecting to find anything in Arkansas Diamond Crater State Park, she said, and she wasn’t sure what she had found when she picked up a stone.
It turns out it was a yellow diamond weighing 4.38 carats.
“I didn’t know it was a diamond at the time, but it was clean and shiny, so I picked it up,” Wredberg said, according to a press release from the park.
The diamond is “about the size of a candy, pear-shaped and lemonade-colored,” Park Superintendent Caleb Howell said.
“When I first saw this diamond under a microscope I was like, ‘Wow, what a beautiful shape and what a beautiful color,'” Howell said in the statement.
The park allows visitors to keep what they find, and more than 75,000 diamonds have been discovered there since 1906, according to the park.
This year, 258 diamonds have been recorded at the park, about one or two per day, weighing in total over 46 carats.
The Wredberg diamond is the largest found since then, the park said.
Some people never find one, but park interpreter Waymon Cox said conditions were perfect to search when the Wredbergs, of Granite Bay, Calif., Decided to give it a try as they were in close to Hot Springs National Park. Wredberg found his in less than an hour.
It had rained in the days leading up to the couple’s visit. Then the sun was there the day they were there, September 23.
“When the rain uncovers a larger diamond and the sun comes out, its reflective surface is often easy to see,” Cox said.
We don’t know what a diamond is worth. The park said it was not doing assessments. A 3.03 carat diamond found in the park in 1990 was then cut into a 1.09 carat round shape and set in a gold ring. The park then purchased the ring for $ 34,000 in donations, and it is on display at the visitor center.
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