[meteorite-list] Moroccan seller

From: MexicoDoug <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun Aug 20 18:22:37 2006
Message-ID: <012e01c6c4a7$1b787720$7acc5ec8_at_0019110394>

Hello Darren and all the others that were so kind to privately email me so
readily with your thoughts,

Darren's kind uploading of the images helped in some additional ways. The
photos I got were not there, but:

The table on which some of the meteorites were photographed upon the same
one in some cases. So was the image numbering schem ...though we had no
duplicate images and I didn't catch any duplicate samples...and though it
was a cursorary looking over.

Thanks to all this, I can follow up with the following:
The name of the sender varies (from Darren vs. mine).
Our email addresses were definitely harvested from the list.
No one who has successfully dealt with him has positive or negative feedback
(yet).
The scales depicted were commercial food scales found in markets and corner
stores.
The image numbering scheme has more numbers in it than would be necessary
for a single seller...but they are attachments, not links which can be used
to identify website visitors.
The common chondrite pricing is not particularly lower than that of some
major established dealers. But who knows where negotiation might lead.

One list member sent a private message which was insightful but still too
soon to tell (good luck).

No commercial dealer responded yet, unfortunately. But they usually know
before the rest of us when someone is scamming. So that might be a weak
positive.

I have three ideas on this:
1. The seller is real, a merchant of some sort and trying to cut out
commercial meteorite brokers.
(and as Darren pointed out...adverse to doing this in public for an
unexplained reason)
2. The seller is actually a cooperative of sorts brokering meteorites for
other Moroccans.
3. There's a catch.

Sounds like this might be a chance for some to see the type of stuff kept
"under the table" at shows, though it looks generally picked over; there
still may be a good chance for a pleasant surprise.. Or maybe not. While
the risk doesn't seem bad, I'm going to be faint of heart for now. Thanks
very much for the advice and comments!

Best wishes, Doug

----- Original Message -----
From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse_at_charter.net>
To: "MexicoDoug" <MexicoDoug_at_aim.com>
Cc: "Meteorite-List" <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2006 3:33 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Moroccan seller


On Sat, 19 Aug 2006 19:48:12 -0500, you wrote:

>Hello List,
>
>Does anyone know gharrad abdelfattah? I think I previously received a
message with large image files from him.

I haven't dealt with him before, but I have had direct offers from people
under
different names before. Some of the meteorites look better than others, but
I'm
really leery of dealing with someone "cold mailing" me directly like that--
if
it was a real offer, why not send it to the whole list? It's not like I'm
one
of the known dealers on the list. Here are some photos of some of the
meteorites (and whatever else some of those photos are) that have been
offered
to me like that. Somebody might recognize some of them.

http://webpages.charter.net/garrison6328/tempfiles/
Received on Sun 20 Aug 2006 06:22:19 PM PDT