[meteorite-list] Total Number of Meteorites?

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Dec 7 12:58:45 2005
Message-ID: <00c801c5fb57$780a61c0$bec8fea9_at_ns279>

Wrong.
You're talking about prices not values.
You want to pay a price below value for your iPod.

And as I tried to express in my last mail,
one can't apply the normal behaviouristic reductions, which are used to
describe a "market", onto the meteoritic thing.

To stay in your example.
I don't know exactely, what an iPod is, would have to look for what it
should be good (seriously!)
Thus I never felt the need to own one, I have no idea, if there exist
different types, I don't know, what it costs.
Hence Uncle Apple produced 10 millions iPods. All people on Earth are like
me, they don't know nothing about iPods - only 1 person out of 6 million
spent some time to learn about iPods.
Sam Apple says: O.k. wasn't such an idea to produce iPods, I keep my share
until the crowd knows that they need it.
Ivan Apple says: I need some cash for my next idea, I wan't to produce
oPods. They didn't want to buy it at 400$, I sell it below costs at 30$.
Mohammed Apple says: I have to pay my bills, blow out on ebay, 1cent
startprice.

Remember, noone knows, what it is good for, only Gary "The iPod" Darrison
and the 999 wacko fellow members of the international iPod fan club.
Gary buys one for 0.5$. He decides the value of an iPod must be 0.5$.
Matteus from the iPod club starts to crow: Ivan Apple is a cruel and sick
extortioner, he wants 30 bucks for an iPod.
Sam Apple smiles and thinks, let them play. If there aren't any iPods
anymore, they will come on their knees asking, if they can have one at
5000$.
Meanwhile 1.000.000 people run in their kitchen and decide that their
toasters must be iPods.

Realistic market scenario?
No? Yes?
With meteorites it's even much more absurd.
Meteorites are extremely rare, much rarer than iPods and they can't be
repoduced if necessary, so not only labour and secondary costs determine the
value, but also the sheer rareness.

Price and value......
Darren, there is no meteorite market.
A market has customers. Meteorite Market has none. And almost no suppliers.
And compared to all other markets. We have no goods :-)
With meteorites we have a supply, but we have zero demand.

Do you think that Esquel's value is 40 times higher than that of Brahin?
If yes, why? Or is it only the price?
What if we hadn't such friendly Russians who pumped in 3 years more Brahin
slices into "market" as there are collectors? What if they had acted like
the Esquel-main-mass-owner?

Darren, it's not a question of time, until you get your desired specimen at
the price you wished.
Will you get a Gibeon at 0.10/g like 3 years ago?
Will you get an Allende at 0.3/g like 25 years ago?
Will you get a Murchison for the shipment costs only like 36 years ago?
Will you ever get a Tagish Lake at 2$ per gram?
Will you get a R-chondrite at 5$/g in 3 years from now on?
Will you get a Sikhote at 0.15/g in 5 years?
Will you ever get a Nogata, a Kaidun, an ALH84001 at all?

Let's meet in 3 years and talk about prices and values of
NWA-achondrites......:-)

Buckleboo!!
Martin


----- Original Message -----
From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse_at_charter.net>
To: <Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 5:32 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Total Number of Meteorites?


On Wed, 7 Dec 2005 15:39:25 +0100, "Martin Altmann"
<altmann_at_meteorite-martin.de> wrote:

>It's amazing also with the ordinary desert stuff. If you are not living
near
>a desert, blue ice field or a site, where once a meteorite was found, you
>can get out of the door and run around for the rest of your life with your
>detector, you'll find gold and silver, but no meteorite. And this stuff
you
>can buy cheaper now than many other consumer goods! So cheap, that some
>hunters even let their chondrites in desert, as the transportation costs
>wouldn't justify to pick them up.

We have two different meanings of "value", though. One meaning is "the cost
of all materials and
labor plus a small profit". The other is "how much someone is willing to
pay for it". As an
example, take the very common iPod. I'm sure that, looking at all the
components involved, the
production of a $400 iPod probably costs around $300 or so at least. So
obviously it wouldn't make
sense for them to sell one for lower than that price (unless it was a "give
away the razor sell the
blades" or some other loss-leader situation). I wouldn't mind having an
iPod. But I wouldn't pay
more than $100 for one that has the features of the $400 models. That
doesn't mean that I'm unaware
of what the production costs of an iPod must be. I simply don't value an
iPod at more than $100.
Now, I'm not going to get a $400 iPod for $100 because Apple has millions of
people willing to pay
$400. But what if they ran out of people willing to buy an iPod but still
had millions of them in
stock? Sooner or later, they'd sell me one for $100 to get rid of it.

It looks like the meteorite situation is similar to that now. You could go
out into the deserts of
Morocco yourself, spend several thousand dollars in supplies, and come back
with a couple of small
unclassified ordinary chondrites for your trouble. But nobody is going to
be willing to pay you the
hundreds of dollars a gram in cost for those pieces, even though that is
your cost for getting (the
"value") of the pieces. The supply of "ordinary" bulk unclassified NWA
meteorites is larger than
the demand from the number of collectors, so sellers are having to give
those
$400-iPod-for-$100-prices.
______________________________________________
Meteorite-list mailing list
Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Received on Wed 07 Dec 2005 12:55:53 PM PST