"Ewan Mason's Star Diamond Corp. (DIAM) dropped one-half cent to nine cents on 74,000 shares. The company, twice jilted by a mining major on its mammoth FalCon diamond project in Saskatchewan, is taking control of its own promotion -- if not yet the project itself. "February is diamond month," Star enthuses, and while its pitch has yet to budge its stock, investors are thrilled with images of polished gems prepared from rough that Star mined years ago.

"Each diamond revealed will be named and the provenance of the stone will be disclosed," cheered Mr. Mason, Star's chairman and interim president and chief executive officer; and true to his word, the company has been revealing a new diamond each day this month, applauding its virtues across various social media platforms. The intent of the company's pitch aside, the daily diamonds offer much insight into the quality of the FalCon diamonds.

First up was Andromeda, a 1.18-carat diamond with near flawless colour and clarity -- E-coloured and VS-1 clarity for those who care -- a gem cut from a 7.47-carat Type IIa rough diamond obtained from the Early Joli Fou (EJF) kimberlite in the Star pipe. That ended the company's provenance disclosure, but a deep dive into old data shows that the diamond had been mined by Star Diamond in one of its initial few batches of kimberlite mined at the 235-metre level back in 2004. The gem was classified white but was otherwise unworthy of praise -- nor was it the largest white diamond collected from that batch of diamond recoveries.

The same pattern played out with Centaurus, the second diamond revealed by Star Diamond. That 1.8-carat gem had been cut from a 10.1-carat Type I diamond from Star's EJF phase, again a gem mined early in the bulk sampling program. Two more polished gems followed: The 1.25-carat Lacerta, a D-coloured VS-2 diamond cut from a 3.31-carat rough gem mined from Star's EJF kimberlite, and the 2.02-carat Pisces diamond, with a ho-hum J colour but VVS-1 clarity, which had been cut from a 3.51-carat Type I diamond -- this time extracted from the Cantuar kimberlite at Star.

Two more gems followed, the one-carat J-coloured Vela on Sunday and the 5.37-carat top light brown Hercules gem today, cut from a 19.67-carat rock described as an off-white fragment of a considerably larger gem when it was recovered from Star's EJF kimberlite in late 2004.

All of Star's diamonds so far look pretty -- kudos to the photographer --- but it is noteworthy that none of them were cut from Star Diamond's most valuable rough diamonds. That may well be by design: Mr. Mason and his crew are looking to wow the market not with a few of the most valuable diamonds that all producing mines can eventually cobble together, but with a bevy of eyepoppers cut from general run-of-mine production.

Undoubtedly the company will trot out some larger and better stones before its February promotion wraps up. Recall that Star Diamond recovered an 11.96-carat Type IIa diamond in its large diameter drilling program at the Star pipe in 2011, a rough gem now classified as D-colour and makeable -- an essentially colourless diamond that can be polished without being sawn into much smaller pieces -- with an estimated value of nearly $14,000 (U.S.) per carat.

Star has an even larger gem, a 15.88-carat Type IIa diamond from the EJF kimberlite in nearby Orion South, valued at just over $6,000 (U.S.) per carat, and that pipe was also home to a 10.52-carat Type I fancy yellow diamond that was appraised at $8,300 (U.S.) per carat. That gem may well make an appearance before the month is out, as Star Diamond's come-on pitch at the start of its online dog and pony show dangled a shot of a yellow gem that appears markedly larger than its neighbours.

Much of Star Diamond's promotion over the past two decades has centred on FalCon having the potential to host a significant number of large and exceptional diamonds, much like Karowe, where Lucara Diamond Corp. (LUC: $0.64) has been mining gems weighing several hundred carats and selling them for several million dollars apiece.

Now, however, Star Diamond is showing that it has many lesser diamonds with sufficient girth and quality to warrant attention. Recall that both Star and Orion South yielded many more plus-two-carat diamonds than has any producing Canadian mine, and the colours of those gems were arguably better than what most of those mines yield. And so, Mr. Mason and his crew look to entice new backers with what they call the "bling effect" -- essentially proof that the FalCon gems carry more than enough value to overcome the modest grades of the two pipes."