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Paragon Diamonds (LON:PRG) unveiled a valuation of the diamond parcel at its Lemphane Kimberlite in Lesotho, which includes two stones of over US$2,000 per carat.
The calculation covered 221.19 carats from various surface samples of the kimberlite, and the largest stone - an 8.83 carat off colour makeable - was valued at US$2,000 a carat.
That came from the largest sample area of nearly 3,000 tonnes.
Twelve diamonds in excess of 1.80 carats, which are known as "2 caraters", were recovered, including two large stones, one mentioned above and the other valued at US$2,400 per carat.
These dozen diamonds represented around 63% of the parcel value but only 21% of the parcel weight, which the company said emphasised the need to collect large volume samples to recover the larger stones.
Across the whole parcel, an average value of US$358 per carat was achieved, including the samples valued in January this year.
Chairman Martin Doyle said: "Although the amount of carats recovered to date is too small to give a statistically confident average price for the diamond population in the Lemphane Kimberlite pipe, it is very encouraging to see a relatively large number of good quality stones showing at this level of sampling.
"Since the 2 carater diamonds recovered to date account for 63% of the value but only 20% of the weight, it is to be expected that the larger tonnages envisaged in mining will result in recovery of a higher proportion of larger stones.
"With the inclusion of the anticipated larger stones the average value is expected to increase.
"This has been observed in the historic data published during the sampling of other kimberlites in the region and is a function of having the majority of the value represented by a small number of large high value stones.
"The results are consistent with what would be expected from a parcel of similar size from other high value diamond populations from kimberlites mined in Lesotho such as Mothae and Letseng."
House broker Sanlam Securities said: "The results thus far suggest that Lemphane is making good progress towards demonstrating high value stones and ultimately economically valuable rock."
The firm revealed it had received a mining licence for Lemphane on Monday this week (Oct 14) putting the whole project on the road to production.
The authorities agreed a two-stage plan which will see the group mine 540,000 tonnes for the first 24 months followed by 3mln tonnes for an initial open-pit life of a decade.
Shares dipped 7.89% to stand at 5.25p.