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Collectors

Hi everyone,

I thought you might enjoy hearing about this......
I've just been slammed on national radio and accused of being a rather bad
person because I collect meteorites. Luckily, I did manage to get the last
word at the end of the interview, but Professor X in Glasgow maintains that by
making them "collectors items", we are depriving science by "keeping them from
scientists".
This strikes me as a strange opinion from a professional....aren't most of the
new finds found by amateurs and then gladly passed to the right institutions
for analysis? A new find is surely useless anyway, until it's been assessed
and thoroughly tested by the real experts. I'd have thought that there must be
many meteorites that would otherwise be lost forever had it not been for the
dedication of the amateur meteorite hunter who's prepared to spend days or
weeks searching often in-hospitable climes.

My little Yorkshire stone will be heading to the NHM in London on Monday
morning, so why do some professionals give us collectors such a bad press?

Regards,
Rob Elliott.
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