[meteorite-list] Total Number of Meteorites?

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Dec 7 17:08:44 2005
Message-ID: <011801c5fb7a$64029580$bec8fea9_at_ns279>

Yah Darren,

I guess we can't meet in our definitions about "value".
If I'm thinking to poor people going to a pawnhouse, where they get a priori
a lower price than the value of an item, as that sector lives from the
differences of value and price and is giving a lower price to be sure that
if the pleges will be auctioned, that they will get a better price,
than I get very confused with "prices" and "values" :-)

"Market": I tried to explain, that with meteorites does not exist any
market.
Perhaps you could agree, that it's at least a very, very strange market,
if each week on ebay are more offers listed than collectors exist?

We'll find it perhaps out in discussing Zelimir's pos?
Martin


----- Original Message -----
From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse_at_charter.net>
To: "Martin Altmann" <altmann_at_meteorite-martin.de>
Cc: <Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 8:29 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Total Number of Meteorites?


On Wed, 7 Dec 2005 19:56:35 +0100, "Martin Altmann"
<altmann_at_meteorite-martin.de> wrote:

>I'm not a philosopher,
>but both of your definitions mean to me correct definitions for price, not
>for value.
>

Value is what worth "the market" places in an item. As long as there are
people willing to pay x
price, than that item has x value, but if people are willing to pay only
x/5, then you can push the
x price as hard as you want, it will only have a value of x/5 if all people
are only willing to pay
x/5. The fact that the PRICE to produce/recover item Y selling at price x
is much higher than
people are willing to pay for x is unfortunate for the producer/recoverer
but utterly irrelevant to
the value of Y.

Let's look at this example-- realizing the dream of generations of
alchemists, you CAN turn lead
into gold. All you need is the right kind of particle accelerators. The
problem is solved. It has
been done. http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalchemistry/a/aa050601a.htm
But the only minor
problem is that it would take billions of dollars and hundreds of years (at
least) to get a troy
ounce of manufactured gold to sell. But do you think that, after making
that billion-dollar gram of
gold, someone's going to be willing to pay a billion dollars for it? Or
would they pay only the
current price for any old gram of gold? The PRICE for that gram of gold may
be billions, but the
VALUE is only $520ish (right now).

Just because something has a certain price to make/recover doesn't HAVE to
mean that it will have
that much VALUE to the potential market. As long as there are people
willing to pay thousands a
gram for planetary meteorites, then planetary meteorites will have a value
of thousands of dollars a
gram. But if people stop being willing to pay thousands a gram for
planetary meteorites, then the
value stops being thousands a gram, even if the recovery/seller's purchase
price remains in the
thousands a gram.
Received on Wed 07 Dec 2005 05:05:51 PM PST