Dan Fagnan shows off the 1.22-carat diamond he found while panning for gold. (Jeff Holmquist/New Richmond News) …A Wisconsin man sifting through mud from a friend's well stumbled across a find that turned out to be a real gem.
Dan Fagnan of St. Croix County, Wis., was panning for gold flakes in wet mud from a 120-foot well which his friend had recently drilled.
"Everyone thinks I'm a fruit loop for panning for gold," he told the New Richmond News of his hobby. The newspaper noted that the local gold Fagnan finds is often small flakes that don't amount to much.
But something caught his eye while he was sifting through wet sand and stone from his friend's well.
It was an irregular-shaped, transparent rock that Fagnan initially thought was a piece of glass.
Was he ever wrong.
A trip to a local jewelry shop revealed Fagnan had found a rough diamond—1.22 carats of it.
Still, the owner of the shop, Karen Greaton, wanted to confirm the finding, the New Richmond News noted. Greaton had it checked by a mineralogist, who confirmed it was a diamond.
"My dad told me it's unlikely to find a diamond here, but diamonds can actually be found anywhere in the world," Greaton told the newspaper.
One thought about how the diamond reached Wisconsin is that volcanic activity from Canada pushed the stone south and deposited it in the state after the ice age.Fagnan told the newspaper he was thrilled about his find and plans to incorporate the stone in a necklace for his soon-to-be-born child.
Some things are just too precious.
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