[meteorite-list] The Pelisson,s. METEORITE GODS

From: dean bessey <deanbessey_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:54:04 2004
Message-ID: <LAW2-F99SeXnbnCndg500005952_at_hotmail.com>

As many of you know I have sold artifacts for longer than I have sold
meteorites. One of the ploys that some slimy artifact dealers do is to tell
anybody who brings them something for them to authtenticate is to tell them
that it is a fake. That way they think that the potential nieve customer
will feel that he is a very knowledgable dealer and in the future only buy
stuff from him. I once had a dealer do that to me with an egyptian artifact
with prominance from a famous collection that was shown to several experts
including one of the worlds leading experts of artifats with the British
Museum.
Meteorite dealers might try this also. I had a customer who bought a common
chondrite from morocco from me once who contacted another dealer who said
that he would classify it for him (Since my understanding is that Marvin
Kilgore is the only dealer who can classify meteorites you know that they
story is fishy already because it wasnt kilgore who did this) and then told
him that it was not a meteorite.
What does this have to do with the Pelissons? Absolutely nothing. However it
is an example of slimy tactics that certain dealers use when they try to
undermine some aspect of a business that they dont like (Such as competation
for instance).
Here is a letter written by the Pelissons to some collector asking if they
could authtenticate a desert meteorite. I make no comments here (Dont want
Art mad at me) but the slime speaks for itself. The Pellisons are of course
technically right in what they say here. Its just that one would think from
reading the Pelisson letter that desert meteorites are nothing short of a
scam that wouldent be touched by serious dealers or researshers. The
Pellisons are distorting facts to put down a part of the sahara meteorite
business that they dont like. It should be noted that this letter was not
written to a customer of mine and was given to me by another dealer.
This is a sad reflection of an hobby when certain people in it like the
Pellisons continues to act like this and to continue stating that their way
of doing things is the only correct way that the world should work. The
meteorite hobby will never become mainstream until this stupid infighting in
the interest of short term profits ends. While the letter is technically
correct it is very misleading about the status of desert meteorites. There
is no effort to tell this new collector of meteorites that desert finds have
a special status in the meteorite world. Thats why the meteoritical society
recogonizes meteorites using a NWA or Sahara name.
Below is the letter that the pellisons wrote to a potential new collector
looking to maximize the amount of meteoritic material that he wants to buy
with limited funds. Just look at the time spent into creating this letter
and the ffort to totally confuse a new collector.
With sad reflections
DEAN
___________________________________________________________________
Sahara 99937 is the stone number 937 found in the year 1999, it's a
temporary identification number which was used by the Labenne family.
It will never be recognized as a new meteorite, excepted if you find a
laboratory to classify your sample. But laboratories need a type
specimen archived for future studies and a thin section for microprobe
measures (200 points).
Each year in July, the Meteoritical Society publishes a supplement to
METEORITICS AND PLANETARY SCIENCE in which are recorded all the new
meteorites of the previous year. This document is really the bible for
any serious meteoricist. The info given there present the most reliable
source for the entire community. Here is the list of the official
meteorites named "Sahara xxxxx" in the last publication of the Meteoritical
Bulletin. Only 17 have been recorded last year and all are meteorites with
unknown location. See page 23:
http://www.uark.edu/campus-resources/metsoc/metbull/mb85.pdf
TKW, is the Total Known Weight of the piece, the sample 99937 was
probably a 200 grams piece before cut. It is a commercial rock which
will never be officially recognized as a meteorite, many Sahara xxxxx are
paired specimen which come from the same old fall, but the information is
unavailable and can't be verified. Everybody can use a NWA or Sahara name
today to sell a rock which is not a meteorite because there is no scientific
work done and type specimen preserved on the majority of these stones.
Best Regards,
Richard & Roland Pelisson
http://www.SaharaMet.com/
http://www.saharamet.com/desert/meteorite/prospect.html
PS: copy of a mail from Dr. Jeffrey N. Grossman, Editor, Meteoritical
Bulletin US Geological Survey People buying/trading meteorites should also
keep in mind that if a meteorite name (including its number, if any) does
NOT appear in the Met. Bulletin (published or on-line), then there is no
guarantee that it has ever been looked at by a meteorite expert or that the
NomCom has ever scrutinized the name, location data, classification, etc.
(or worse,
it HAS scrutinized the information and rejected/changed it!).



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Received on Tue 12 Feb 2002 04:21:56 PM PST