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Yorkshire find?



Hi everyone,

I've just returned from a hastily arranged dash to Yorkshire, England where I
purchased a small stone meteorite from a farm worker. This time, however,
there may be more to it than meets the eye, so I thought I'd ask advice from
the listees.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've had my allotted 15 minutes of fame all in
one lump, with an interview given to a local newspaper eventually reaching the
national newspapers, then tv and radio. During an interview for BBC radio, I
mentioned that I'd be interested in buying meteorites from finders if they'd
care to send me a small piece to inspect. Luckily enough, a few days later,
England had a wonderful midnight fireball which stirred up a lot more
interest. By all accounts, the fireball may have been big enough to drop a
little bit of space treasure, and although I didn't expect to have any
response, I contacted the BBC again last Friday to let them know that I was
offering a reward for any pieces found. Sure enough, little pieces of black
rock started to arrive in my morning post but none came anywhere close to
warrant further investigation.
Yesterday evening however, I received a phone call from a guy in Yorkshire
claiming to have found a (the?) meteorite.....the description given to me
matched perfectly and without any prompting from me either. This guy would not
let me visit him at his home, nor was he willing to send me a sample or even
allow me to arrange collection by a registered courier. I had to arrange to
meet him somewhere and he'd show me the stone.
To cut a long story short and after a long drive, I eventually found him and
he produced a small black rock from his pocket, wrapped up in a plastic bag.
The stone itself is complete, conical, perfectly crusted with only a few chips
through to the grey interior; it was also damp from rain or dew. There are
contraction cracks all over the crust and some flight markings too. It draws
slightly on a magnet but in my opinion, the crust doesn't look as fresh as I'd
expected to see from a recent fall. Not wanting to return home empty handed,
we agreed a price (he wanted only cash of course!) and I purchased the stone
from him. Trying to get information from this guy regarding more details of
when & where he found it was like pulling teeth, and about as much fun
too....all he saw were £££££'s ($$$$$'s?) I gather that he found it last
Saturday, lying on the grass lawn in his front garden, just as he was about to
trim the grass. He said it probably hit the roof or side wall of his farmhouse
and fell to the ground.

When I returned home, I enlarged one of the chips in the crust and discovered
white inclusions embedded in the grey matrix. I'm not planning on doing it any
further damage to look for chondrules yet, but so far, it reminds me of
Allende.

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