AW: [meteorite-list] AD: METEORITE CLASSIFICATION SERVICE

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Jul 15 10:14:01 2006
Message-ID: <007d01c6a818$e8d4cee0$4f41fea9_at_name86d88d87e2>

Well said David ;-)

Also in my cellar are waiting some boxes with stones to be saved for
science...

No seriously, I have difficulties to understand the hens' huddle like
kerfuffle in that discussion, nor the substance of it seems to be smth else
than a little Killgore-bashing.

He wanted to raise some funds, so that the UA can acquire some meteorites
and he wanted to establish a classification service.

Until now, he obviously didn't cope to get it running.
If it won't work at all - so what?
That he made some ballyhoo (also with some silly statements) for raising
funds, is that a so severe breach?

And if his project will work - what then would be the bottomline?
AU or SWMC, call it like you want, would be nothing else
than one single institutional collection more, which buys meteorites.
One among others, that's all.

I can't see there a reason for hysteria. Institutional collections always
were buying meteorites. Nowadays not so many anymore as still in the 90ies,
when some hunters made a modest fortune with desert finds,
but where do you think all the large meteorite collections in the museums
and universities all over the world stem from? They were purchased or
donated. That is the most normal thing in the world of meteorites!
Wasn't ASU once buying Nininger's collection, wasn't the Polar Research in
Tokyo purchasing Zeitschel's collection, wasn't Brezina knuckles rapped,
cause he spend to much money for acquiring meteorites for the Vienna
collection,...and so on?
Now then, where is the sensation?

And what shall those illogical speculations about the effects for the
collectors? That, if the SMWC will work, no meteorites wouldn't be available
anymore for the private collectors or that prices will raise to a level,
where nobody can afford anymore to collect?
And that in the same breath with the opinion that there would be hundreds
and thousands of tons of meteorites in the desert, which would be lost for
science else??

You must decide - either there are thousands of tons in the desert and in
this case one has to open ones eyes a little bit more.
Do you really think that the UA is such a mighty institution, that they
could buy hundred and thousands of tons? Do you know that there exist other
huge collections on Earth too?
Anyway - it's not very likely, that there are so many meteorites to be
saved...may you have a little look here:
http://www.jensenmeteorites.com/meteorite-collections.htm
200 years of meteorite collecting, including Antarctica and hot desert..
and distributed on many huge institutional collections are 300 tons, 400tons
- I don't know how many of the existing 581 tons are kept in institutional
collections.

So probably desert had produced until now only a few tons of material in
total.

And where should here be the problem, if Killgore will buy from now on ALL
of those few tons?!

Prices will raise also without Killgore within a few years, cause Sahara is
over.

Does that mean the end of all meteorite collecting?
Folks, meteorite collecting existed already before NWA (NWA 001 was designed
in 2001?) and before Sahara and Libya in the 90ies.
Can't you hear the greybeards wistfully babbling about the good ol Golden
Ages of collecting in Pre-NWA-times? They aren't senile, I know it well,
meteorites were sold and bought and collected also in the 80ies! Really!

Nor was meteorite collecting invented by Bob Haag, nor Nininger, it was
established 150, 200 years before!

So what shall this be all about.
If once the SWMC will buy in large style meteorites, fine. The dealers could
spend then better their time in hunting, recovering or purchasing much more
meteorite, they wouldn't have the constraint always to sell the rarest stuff
in bulk to the few collectors, who can afford it, but had time to prepare
also nice small specimens for the collectors with smaller budget, hadn't to
argue with collectors, who think that 10$/g for a R-chondrite Micro is
daylight robbery
a world in pink...

If not, then we can dwell on on the list to call Killgore a loudmouth,
But not now, now it's to early.

And to struggle about some incorrect marginalia,
as e.g. that it is rubbish, that meteorites would accumalte over millions of
years in the deserts or that it was tactically unintelligent to drive for
advertising his idea that sow through the village, that the nasty looters
would plunder the deserts and the stones would be lost for science,
because later he has to be reliant of those looters selling their stones to
him,
is imho a waste of webspace.

Buckleboo!
Martin
 
Received on Sat 15 Jul 2006 10:13:55 AM PDT