[meteorite-list] Self Proclaimed Pairings Issues (SPPI)/Personal Thoughts

From: almitt <almitt_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon May 8 13:47:46 2006
Message-ID: <44602CEF.4060602_at_kconline.com>

Greetings to all,

There is another unfortunate side effect to the way specimens were
collected in the NWA region. To me (an this is only my opinion) there
has been a misrepresentation of true total weights by the finders along
with dealers buying material. It is my understanding that often when
material was collected at a NWA site, that it is/was kept separate and
the "found" material represented a certain weight for that find. A
dealer might buy a portion of that material say for example a 800 gram
stone and leave the remaining say for example 4,200 grams for other
buyers. The dealer of the 800 gram stone cuts the material and sends it
off to be classified and given a number. After the specimen is then
acknowledged with a class and given a number the dealer then offers this
stone for sale with a total weight of 800 grams.

The crime in this (per my example) is there is an additional 4,200 grams
that were part of that fall. Buyers thinking they are buying what is
only 800 grams of material are really being sold a number with a total
weight 800 that matches 5 kilos of material, and making their material 6
times more common. One only has to look at the bulletins to see the
large variety of various classes and high number of "rare" classes
found. Obviously some of these are unique falls and possibly different
material. HOWEVER, there are a great number of specimens that are paired
(whether we know it or not and whether they are ever properly paired or
not). If this doesn't show anything else, it should show the importance
of proper collecting procedures so material can be properly cataloged
and known. It is one reason why I haven't bought as many NWA specimens
as I would like.

While I am glad that there is new and unique material available for all
of us, there is a lot of problems on the way items were collected, total
weights and some dealers not informing buyers of possible paired
material from the source they bought from.
Sadly in the end this is about money, controlling the market and making
you competition look bad. I think if dealers had worked together that
the whole NWA fiasco might have yielded a better understanding of the
true amount of falls and unique material from that region.

(disclaimer) I'm not suggesting any of the debaters on this subject are
guilty of what I have mentioned, rather it is a statement of one of the
problems that I see with the collecting of NWA specimens and how they
are collected, purchased and so on. Maybe some of the guilty will chime
in to defend their bad practices. All my best to the rest!

--AL Mitterling


Adam Hupe wrote:

The weight is recorded under a particular number so using nomenclature that
applies to an official or provisional meteorite to describe another will
only serve to make these weight entries inaccurate.
Received on Tue 09 May 2006 01:47:27 AM PDT