[meteorite-list] newpaper article

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:55:50 2004
Message-ID: <200201231721.JAA13986_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

>
> Good morning all. There is a big article this morning (1/23/02) in the =
> Denver Post section F page 1 and 3 titled "Outer-space alchemists, =
> Meteorite dealers turn chunks of alien rock into gold". Anne Black is =
> featured with a picture and there are quotes from Matt Morgan, Mike =
> Jensen and Eric Twelker. Alain Carion is mentioned. In all it is not a =
> bad article with less than the usual number of mistakes. The article, =
> with expanded info, be seen at =
> http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,45%257E351682,00.html. =20
>


http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,45%257E351682,00.html

Outer-space alchemists
Meteorite dealers turn chunks of alien rock into gold

By Bill Briggs
Denver Post
January 23, 2002

For sale: a shiny, 1.2-pound chunk of iron plucked from an
Arizona canyon that's said to be cursed by evil spirits.

The price: just $1,500.

The sales pitch: It came from outer space.

Thank you for shopping at the meteorite market, a loose blend of
Internet-based speculators and starry-eyed collectors who share a universal
passion for alien rocks. But along with your wallet and sense of wonder, be
sure to bring a dose of skepticism: This worldwide emporium is sometimes
pricey and occasionally shady.

It also has deep roots in Colorado - home to at least five space-rock
dealers stretching from Delta to Denver.

"Some folks do it because they are interested in space and astronomy," says
one of those sellers, 28-year-old Matt Morgan, who runs Mile High Meteorites
from his Lakewood home.

"There are people who do it for the healing powers, for jewelry, scientists
for study, and those who acts as investors and treat meteorites like stock."

Like any commodity, these wayward bits of asteroids, moons or planets are
now ruled by the earthly forces of supply and demand. Prices can reach
$20,000 (for a massive, 17,350-gram monster that fell on mountain in Niger
11 years ago) to a bargain-basement $70 (for a 5.9-gram slice of a stone
that crashed into Homestead, Iowa, during an 1875 meteor shower.)

And like gold or gasoline, meteorite values do rise and fall. (It's
currently a down market, collectors report.) Pricing is basically set by
three factors - weight, composition and whether anyone saw the fireball that
brought the rock from sky to ground.

To understand better, here's a little dip into Astronomy 101. Almost nine of
every 10 meteorites are classified as "stony" and contain melted minerals
along with flakes of metals such as iron and nickel. Most were once attached
to asteroids, but some are thought to have broken away from the moon or
Mars.

The other main group is the "irons," made almost entirely of iron with
traces of other elements such as chromium or phosphorus. These came from the
very hearts of asteroids.

Meteorite samples on display at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

"Irons" are more scarce, so they may carry a higher price tag. But another
economic principle can boost a meteorite's value: hype. If a fireball is
witnessed and later recovered, it tends to be worth more than a space rock
that's accidently unearthed in a Nebraska corn field, experts say. In
meteorite lingo, that's a "fall," rather than a "find."

"Say that one fell and hit your neighbor's house and made the newspapers.
Then you find another one in the neighbor's yard and it's all weathered and
beat-up. Which one would you prefer to have?" asks Mike Jensen, an Aurora
resident who, with brother Bill, runs Jensen Meteorites.

"Obviously, the one that made the papers. So those have a tendency to have a
much greater value," Jensen says. "They've got a story."

And right now, meteorite dealers are abuzz about the brilliant fireball that
exploded over southern Colorado on Aug. 17, sparking a series of sonic booms
and a slew of sightings from Idaho to New Mexico. Denver-based researchers
believe it was a one-ton, desk-sized chunk that likely came from the
asteroid belt beyond Mars. They think it slammed into a lonely,
10-mile-square area in the La Garita Mountains near Saguache and are
planning a spring search.

While local scientists muse that, if found, the big rock may reveal an
entirely new type of meteorite, many collectors drool about its net worth.

During a meteorite sale earlier this month at Lakeside Mall, this was the
very first question asked of space-rock dealer Anne Black: "Did anybody find
that big one-ton that was supposed to have gone down in the La Garita
Mountains?"

The query came from Jack Crandall, 65, a Denver resident who sells rocks,
minerals and Indian artifacts. Black, a French native, smiled brightly and
offered a hopeful reply in her thick accent: "They're still beating the
bushes for it!"

Black, 57, runs Impactika.com, a Denver-based website that features space
pebbles found in Tunisia ($25), a mammoth, gray meteorite discovered in
Mexico ($22,000) and slices of a crusted alien rock pulled from the sands of
Egypt ($95).

Most of her sales are made through her website, which features virtual
images of orange fireballs zooming toward a lighted Denver skyline. But for
her recent weekend sale at Lakeside Mall, she gingerly arranged her
meteorite fragments on a dark-blue tablecloth containing a pattern of silver
planets and moons. A trickle of shoppers curiously studied her otherworldly
wares.

"You put these out on the table, put price tags on them, and every once in a
while you stop and think, "Gee, this one came a long way,' " Black says.

"A couple of asteroids in the asteroid belt happened to bump into each other
and threw these pieces across the galaxy, and they happened to end up here,"
she says with a laugh, "at the Lakeside Mall."

Black, who came to America 30 years ago to teach French, began dabbling in
space rocks in the mid-1990s while helping Paris-based meteorite expert
Alain Carion translate a book into English. Sucked into the hobby "a little
bit at a time," she says the magic of meteorites "is something I don't think
you ever get over."

Of course, there's money to be made, too.

Black is one of roughly 1,000 dealers or collectors around the world who
typically buy, sell and trade via the Internet or by attending mineral shows
and auctions. Very few peddlers have found actual asteroid shards on the
ground.

The number of full-time sellers is less than a dozen, experts say. Most are
hobbyists with day jobs. Black works as an administrative assistant at a
rental-car company. Matt Morgan, from Mile High Meteorites, has a 9-to-5
position with the Colorado Geological Society.

"There are a few who are mostly collectors but sell pieces now and then when
they upgrade their collections," Black says. "And in the middle there's a
big bunch of part-time dealers who make a few dollars at it and have a great
time doing it. I am one of those."

Many hobbyists can turn meteorites into gold, grossing as much as $100,000
in a year and profiting about half that, according to one dealer.

Take a spin through the Internet auction site eBay and it's clear that space
rocks are still popping. On a recent day, 640 people were offering "meteor"
fragments, slices, cuts or full rocks for prices ranging from 11 cents to
$7,500.

"eBay changed everything," says Eric Twelker, an environmental lawyer who
also runs the Web-based Meteorite Market from his home in Juneau, Alaska.

In 1994, when the popular book "Rocks From Space" was published, Twelker was
one of just two dozen dealers listed in the appendix.

"Then a few years ago, people - some of them kids - started buying bunches
of little pieces from me and other dealers, too . . . and putting them on
eBay. They made a good profit and bought more and bigger ones," Twelker
says.

"People on eBay will often pay up to two or three times the price for
something sold by a kid as they would pay a reputable dealer - go figure.
Anybody could be a dealer. I will sell you a handful of Henbury meteorites
(from Australia), and you can sell them on eBay. That simple."

Question is: How many available "meteorites" really came from deepest
reaches of space and not from a suburban driveway?

"I get about one letter a day from people offering to sell me "meteorites'
that they found," Twelker says. "Virtually none are meteorites. Most are
honest mistakes. I would guess one in 10 (is) fraud.

"There's not much temptation to bite on these because fraudsters come across
as stupid. Now, eBay is another story."

Collectors and dealers say a rising number of phony space rocks have been
seeping into the meteorite market. Many blame eBay.

"It's something that's getting more and more annoying," Black says. "On eBay
you constantly see fake ones. My advice is to know who you are buying from.
If you go through eBay, check how often the guy sells them. Once in a blue
moon? And how did he get them?"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Space rocks

 Originally parts of asteroids or possibly the moon or Mars,
 meteors are chunks of interplanetary debris that slam
 into Earth's atmosphere at 25 kilometers per second. It's
 like hitting a wall. They explode and often shower a
 wide area with fragments. Space rocks that don't
 burn up in flight but reach the ground are known as
 meteorites.

 Here are the answers to five common questions about these
 stones from the sky, provided by the American Meteor Society
 and other experts:

 What's a meteor shower?

 A period when one to 1,000 meteors
 per hour can be seen from Earth as "shooting stars." Meteor
 showers usually take place when the Earth passes through a stream
 of comet debris.

 How common are meteorites?

 Estimates are that 10 to 50 meteorite droppings occur
 over the Earth each day. Two thirds are over oceans, and one
 fourth are over uninhabited land areas, leaving only about two
 to 12 events each day with the potential for discovery.

 Am I in danger?

 Researchers say each square kilometer of the Earth's surface
 should collect one meteorite fall about once every 50,000
 years, on the average. If the area is increased to 1 square mile,
 this time period becomes about 20,000 years between falls.

 How big are most meteorites?

 Finds range in size from bits weighing only a few grams up to
 the largest known specimen: the Hoba meteorite, found
 in South Africa in 1920, which weighed about 60 tons.

 How old are these things?

 Meteorites are said to be "the memory of the solar system."
 They were formed when the solar system came into being some
 4.57 billion years ago. By comparison, most ancient rocks
 found on Earth are 3.9 billion years old. (Some Martian
 meteorites are younger).

 - Bill Briggs

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Anybody with a driveway rock can sell it on eBay and claim it as a
meteorite," adds Twelker. "Some get hounded (by suspicious buyers), but
many, I think, are sold."

A handful of laboratories around the world are used by some collectors to
verify the authenticity of their space rocks. Those include the Center for
Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University and the National Museum of
Natural History in Washington, D.C.

What's more, Black and other dealers are banding together to form an
association that will offer an official seal of approval for meteorites in
the market.

But that won't stop another galactic crime. While some people are hawking
bogus meteorites, others are swiping the real ones.

According to a website called the Meteorite Exchange, thieves have stolen
meteorites from at least seven collections and museums since 1998. That
includes a 444-gram slice of the Glorieta Mountain meteorite (found in New
Mexico in 1884 and worth roughly $21,000) that was reportedly lifted from
the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show last year.

"You should understand that meteorite trading is not quite a legitimate
enterprise," Twelker says. "Where do they come from? Where do they go? Those
questions are not asked, generally."

Which means that dealers must bank everything on their reputations.
Especially when most of the sales are brokered online.

"I sit here in isolated Juneau and deal with the world," Twelker says. "I
judge whether or not they are real or frauds.

"The potential for loss is great. I may send thousands of dollars to some
west African country or Russia based only on my judgment of a person's
e-mail."
Received on Wed 23 Jan 2002 12:21:06 PM PST