[meteorite-list] Re: "Tagounite L3"

From: Martin Altmann <Altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Oct 18 10:15:18 2004
Message-ID: <01ad01c4b51c$e4de4460$3ee2e13e_at_9y6y40j>

Hi Zelimir, list,

Uuuuh my website is very old - that's why everybody needs my
email-assortment list...
I don't find the time to restore my homepage (I'm sending between 3000-5000
emails per year, as the knowledge about meteorites is mere here and I try to
answer each and every question, no matter if someone is interested in
buying).

Be sure, that I never sold pieces from that stone labelled as L3.

This stone stems from the beginning of my meteorite selling carreer. It must
be more than 4 years ago, when I bought it. I got it from a respected
moroccain dealer, who's still supplying dealers with classified material. It
was an entire stone, about 1.5kgs, so nothing to see from outside. The
dealer told me, that it was found by two French hunting for artefacts in
1999 in the Tagounite region, tkw would be 3kgs and that a kind of
preclassification was done and that it would be an L3.

At home I cut the stone - and voila! Inside it was a weathered stinky old
brown extremely equilibrated chondrite with very few chondrules. Guess L5 or
6.
I tried to get it classified, for those who won slices from ebay (most below
1/g and it's certainly not more worth and of course I inserted it as
unclassified, mentioning that I was told, that it would be L3, but in my
opinion it must be an L5), even willing to pay for and having a loss, only
to get the thing straight - but I gave it to somewhere in Poland and they
didn't manage it.
Here in Germany it's impossible to get an ordinnary chondrite classified,
especially such an ugly one, so if someone knows a place...

Cheers!
Martin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Zelimir Gabelica" <Z.Gabelica_at_uha.fr>
To: "Martin Altmann" <Altmann_at_Meteorite-Martin.de>
Cc: <Altmann_at_Meteorite-Martin.de>
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 3:45 PM
Subject: "Tagounite L3"


Hello Martin, list,

Martin, on your site you are offering for sale a meteroite you are calling
"Tagounite L3".

This reminds me I also purchased in due time the same meteorite (I should
better say: "a stone with the same name").
So far, I believed this was a name invented by the nomads as Tagounite most
of the time refers to the famous place (market) inMorocco where many of the
NWA's are being purchased from nomads.

My question: do you (or anybody else) know more (status, real type, where
found, tkw...)about that famous "Tagounite L3" ? Does it have now a NWA
number and how is it known that it is an "L3" ?
I believe it is for sure not in any official nomenclature listing, nor
probably on the waiting list for receiving a NWA number in future.

It is just good to know that we are at least two of us having been once
hooked by that "name"...But there could be more of us, as this meteorite is
a beauty...Bernd ?

Cheers,

Zelimir
Received on Mon 18 Oct 2004 10:15:09 AM PDT