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Twelve week ‘diamond hunt’ offers $15,000 in prizes

To help raise awareness and generate more business, the NWT Diamond Centre has been bringing the holiday cheer sooner than expected with its 12 Weeks of Christmas Diamond Hunt promotion.
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Patricia Caffet, director of the NWT Diamond Centre, is making it challenging for people looking for the NWT Diamond cards during the hunt. Ethan Butterfield/NNSL photo

To help raise awareness and generate more business, the NWT Diamond Centre has been bringing the holiday cheer sooner than expected with its 12 Weeks of Christmas Diamond Hunt promotion.

After brainstorming ideas with the NWT Diamond Centre’s owners, Crossworks Manufacturing, a promotional Christmas-based treasure hunt was decided upon as the solution.

“To get people excited, to give them something fun to do too,” said Patricia Caffet, director at the NWT Diamond Centre. “Most of our clientele were from out of country, so when Covid hit we were like, nobody in town knew we were even here. They thought we were to do with the diamond mining … they never knew that we actually sold the Canadian diamonds here.

“So it was like, how do we get the attention of the community and communities around here,” she said. “Letting the North know that this is the go-to place … this is where it starts and stops.”

The rules of the promotion are simple, find an NWT Diamond Centre card and win a prize. The catch? The card could be anywhere within city limits, and residents are given no hints as to its whereabouts.

Each weekly winner gets a prize from the NWT Diamond Centre, with all the prizes adding up to $15,000.

“That’s a good little chunk to give away,” said Caffet. “And you can win more than once — you can win all the prizes if that’s your luck.”

That won’t be someone’s luck this year, however, as there’s already been three different winners. The latest of the three, Jhinky Fernandez-Raneses, was thrilled when she found her card, which has now been claimed by her daughter Jhoezelle.

“Oh my God, I’m so excited. This is my first time. I didn’t join last year. I won already but my daughter took it, right,” she said, laughing. “I want to get more.”

According to Caffet, this is the second year the promotion has run and the NWT Diamond Centre is hoping to keep it going beyond that.

“Last year was our first try,” she said. “We hit and miss, learned a few things. This year as well, we’ve learned a few things. So next year, it’ll be a little different again, but we’re only trying to improve it to make it better for people.”

For those interested in participating, the diamond hunts originally started on Fridays, but will now be moved to Saturdays starting Oct. 30.