Couple finds candy-sized diamond while visiting state park

A couple from northern California found a 4.38-carat yellow diamond during a visit to Arkansas, making it the largest piece of bling found this year in a state park known for its shiny stones.

Noreen and Michael Wredberg took a trip to two Arkansas national parks last month, then on a whim decided to travel an hour south to Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro. About 40 minutes into their walk, Noreen saw something shiny on the ground.

“I didn’t know it was a diamond at the time, but it was clean and shiny, so I picked it up,” she told park officials, according to a press release. “We really didn’t think we’d find one, let alone something that big.”

After Noreen Wredberg found the diamond, she gave it to her husband, who brought it to the park’s diamond discovery center. Park Superintendent Caleb Howell placed the diamond under a microscope and said he was amazed.

“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 a statement Thursday. “Mrs. Wredberg’s diamond weighs over four carats and is about the size of a candy, with a pear shape and a lemonade yellow color.”

The Wredbergs have since returned to California and are still deciding what to do with the diamond. Noreen Wredberg told CBS MoneyWatch on Friday that she and her husband had yet to have the diamond appraised.

The diamond – which Noreen named Lucy’s Diamond – is one of 258 diamonds that visitors have found and recorded at the Crater of Diamonds this year, park officials said. Over 75,000 diamonds have been found in the park since 1906.

In 1990, Arkansas resident Shirley Strawn found a 3-carat white diamond which she then sold to the state for $ 34,700 (equivalent to $ 58,000 today). A Colorado woman found an 8.5-carat white diamond – dubbed the Esperanza – in the crater in 2015 that is now worth $ 1 million, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The largest diamond ever found in the United States – Uncle Sam – was discovered in the crater in 1924. The 40.2-carat gemstone was sold to a private collector for $ 150,000 in 1971, a little more a million dollars today.