[meteorite-list] Auctioneer Abuse of Meteorites was: Pallasite

From: Martin Altmann <Altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Nov 26 12:05:19 2005
Message-ID: <011701c5f2ad$63241420$14599a54_at_9y6y40j>

Hi Mike,

in priciple I imagine the idea to sell meteorites via an auction house to be
not so absurd.
(Must exist more serious enterprises than this one.)

You know it by your own, if one has larger and rare, thus expensive pieces
for sale,
how one has to slog to sell it at an acceptable price, cause the collectors'
community is so small, a real petri dish
and in our times, the prophet's word is true more than ever:

"Bah, the market is in ruin."
. Matteo 4,23
Take Moon.
The average meteorite collector can't afford to buy larger pieces or prefers
to buy many different localities and types rather than to spend all the
money for a single larger piece. So what to do, one has to chip it into
hundreds of minute specimens sending a remarkable amount of material as cut
loss down to Orcus, and afterwards one has to sell it over many, many years.
Those who are interested in lunaites, are specialists - for the normal
collectors it's sufficient to have a single specimen of a lunaite to include
that type in his/her collection and important in the first instance for them
is, that it's a piece of Moon and not a luniate with special
particularities.
And these specialists are deep in that matter. If in Kalahari a large chunk
is found, they speculate, that soon Moon will be available at 20$/g and they
won't buy, if a desparate finder or a collector, who has to pay some bills,
is loosing a piece by accident on ebay at a few hundreds per gram, they
won't buy anymore at the price that number had before (and here in Germany
they suspect you of ripping them off, if you refuse to immediately adapt
your price to the ebay-accident (the most astonishing one I saw, was, when a
1g Dho-lunar slice died at only 150$)), then you can't sell for as long as a
year anymore, until the accident is forgotten...

So why not to address via an auction house with a sounding name, prestige,
established clientele and publicity input to a completely different and
larger group of buyers?
If those auction houses sell fine art, antiquities and other pricy
collectibles and among the clients there are some, who have no problems to
spend regularly many k$ - with the right presentation it could work. I mean
e.g. lunaites still are by faaaaar more rare, than anything else, which is
sold there, but relatively or better to say dirt cheap compared to the
items, which are going there - but more fascinating also for the layman. Not
many are knowing at all, that it's possible to own a stone from Moon.

At least a try wouldn't be not such a bad idea. If it won't work, the owner
can carry on with dumping that stuff on ebay and to fight with the ups and
downs of that, what some call "The Market".

Buckleboo!
Martin





----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Farmer" <meteoritehunter_at_comcast.net>
To: <MexicoDoug_at_aol.com>; <Altmann@Meteorite-Martin.de>;
<steve_arnol60120_at_yahoo.com>
Cc: <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2005 5:05 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Auctioneer Abuse of Meteorites was: Pallasite


> That is one of the best emails I have read in a long time!
> Butterfields wanted me to put some Lunar and Martian specimens in their
> auction a couple of years ago, I just laughed when they presented me with
> the details.
> Do you also know, that the buyer must arrange shipping, not too handy of
an
> option if you say, live in Russia, and need to call LA to find a shipping
> company and make arrangements for them not only to ship, but to package as
> well. It seems like Bonhams is not only greedy, but too lazy to take care
of
> the details.
> I to get sick of reading these misleading things about other meteorites to
> promote that one. Esquel has not been hacked up. There are complete
slices,
> the largest pallasite slices in the world already cut and sold of Esquel.
I
> have yet to see one of Fukang, only hacked up partslices.
> If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.
> Mike Farmer
>
Received on Sat 26 Nov 2005 12:18:14 PM PST