Uncle Sam (diamond)
Uncle Sam is the largest ever in the United States found diamond .
The diamond was found in Murfreesboro , Arkansas , at the Prairie Creek Mine in 1924 . The site is now part of the Crater of Diamonds State Park . The diamond was named by its finder Wesley Oley Basham, a worker at the Arkansas Diamond Corporation . The rough diamond originally weighed 40.23 carats (8.046 g). The diamond was cut twice by the Schenk & Van Haelen company in New York City . In the end, as a piece of jewelry, the diamond weighed 12.42 carats (2.484 g).
The diamond belonged to the Peikin jewelers on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and was temporarily on loan to the American Museum of Natural History . In 1971, the jewelry dealer Sidney de Young acquired the diamond and sold it in turn to a private anonymous collector for $ 150,000.