AW: [meteorite-list] insomnia can cause clouding of consciousness

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue May 9 07:43:49 2006
Message-ID: <014c01c6735d$d36ff380$4f41fea9_at_name86d88d87e2>

Dear list,

we shouldn't loose in this discussions a more general sight.
Dealers moan about the radical drop in prices, the difficulties to get the
stuff classified, collectors bewail the lack of accurate data for their
material, both groups permanently are afraid to experience a financial loss,
scientists complain about a criminal plundering and feel to classify an
ordinary chondrite is an emetic job; collectors and scientists accuse the
dealers of being driven solely by rampant mammonism; collectors blame
scientists and dealers to destroy fine specimens by cutting, dealers and
collectors object to scientists to have an insufficient description system
and no interest in bringing paired stuff together...

If you read the list, then you inevitably get to the point,
that the Sahara-boom must have been a downright terrible calamity!!!

Well, I really don't know anymore, whether I have to make clear, that the
short period of the desert rush, was and will be for all groups an
incredible and, sadly, an irrecoverable enormous MEGA-TERA-PARA-BONANZA in
all fields (hunting, collecting, sience, monetary aspects).

Bernd, Joern, Dieter, Blaine, Alex - please you veterans help me to
enlighten all those groups, that nowadays we are living in a meteoritical
paradise !!!
Tell them, how it was in the years before the desert rush.
Tell them, how few different meteorites one could permanently acquire at
all.
Tell them, what an overwhelming sensation it was, to find exhibited on a
dealers table a piece of a HOW or URE, which was larger sized than a
fingernail!
Tell them, what for a deep satisfaction it was, to get a pinhead sized bogey
of something so exotic lice an ACAP or even a Moon in one's collection.
Tell them, how catastrophically ruinous your fervor was, what efforts were
to undertake to get a Brahin or a Sikhote into the colln.
Good heavens folks, those weren't mythical ages aeons ago, that happened
still 6-10 years ago!

You Morocco-crusaders, tell them, how short those Sahara-boom lasted, tell
them about the culmination 3 years ago, tell them how rapidly it is going to
an end since.

Scientists, tell them of those days, when it was an exiting event to get an
eucrite on the table, tell them how appetently you were buying and trading
the first desert finds!

I really can't grok the permanent discussions here.
What do we all want more????

On the one hand the permanent whining, that "market" is in ruin, on the
other hand the whining about exaggerated prices, are you all blind?

Collectors, the prices of today for desert material are 10-50 times LOWER
than only a few years ago. What does it matter at this level, whether a DIO
or a R has 200grams tkw or with its possible pairings 5kgs???
What shall those grieved faces, if you have bought a cumul EUC at 6$/g and
some months later for a short period it is going for 2.5$/g ???
Do you seriously think, that in the very next few years prices will stay so
low and that each type will still be disposable at will??

Dealers, what shall the anxiety that there is almost no profit to make at
present times with desert and that you had losses with material bought a
while ago? Sell meanwhile classical locations, they are stable and there you
can earn money. And with desert: Don't you see, how the first type already
tripled in price on ebay? Don't you see, that the supply from desert breaks
down?
Don't you see your collegues haply buying each brown boring stone they can
get down there, for later folding their feet on the table in front of the
fireplace in their villas?
(Arrrrrgh any wealthy sponsor out there, for whom we could organize a mighty
additional old age pension, as long as it is still possible?)

And what about those plaints about the missing data for NWAs?
The stuff is incredible dirt cheap and everyone knows, that there's the rub,
in the way, they were collected, whereon nobody had any influence.
Strewnfield data simply can't be retrieved anymore. Whether the pairings
will be set together again, we will see much later, I personally guess, as
it is already the case, at least the most rare types will be compared.
If you can't bear to have such orphans in your collection, just don't
acquire NWAs, take classical locations or Oman-meteorites (as long as it's
still possible), who do have all data, but are paid like NWAs at present.
Or buy from real Sahara-hunters, who record the data of their true finds,
like e.g. Franco or the Berouds.

Instantaneously the dilemma between accurate tkw of possible pairings and
the official classification of stones, to calm the collectors to get 100%
officially the right stuff, can't be solved.
(A dilemma which can't be resolved, Martin Pleonasticus is speaking).
And also the reproaches against the Met.Soc and the Nom.Com aren't
justified. Please check the archive, wasn't it last year, when Grossman
explicitely invited collectors and dealers here on the list, to help with
their ideas to improve the nomenclature system for NWA-meteorites?
As one of the results now all true finds with coordinates will get a proper
name, to reward the finders, who cared for the record of data.
And also with the classification issue I have to calm you, those
unclassified NWAs sold, who says, that they would be lost forever?
There is no obstacle, that they could be classified later. Look at the
IMCA-site, there you find even an offer, where private collectors can get
their stuff classified for free!

We don't have to be purblind and just have to apply a perspective over a
larger distance of time.
The desert rush was an unique event in history of meteoritics. The mass of
finds banged into a worldwide collector's scene of perhaps only 1000 people,
that's the reason, why the prices dropped underground. It was a short period
of only 4-5 years and there weren't unclear huge amounts of material found.
Please reread the post, where Grossman extracted from the Bulletin database
the total amount of recorded meteorites, wherefrom one easy can deduct, that
with NWA all in all we speak only about very few tonnes. But because there
are so few collectors on Earth, the prices felt, despite the fact, that
meteorites are still the most rare matter on Earth.
Additionally the tininess of that, what some of you call "meteorite market",
explains, why only a single person, who is dumping a meteorite, is necessary
for destroying the price for a while. As it happened in some cases. Take the
actual Moon price for an example. Those fluctuations are transient.
Take Mars. Still one year ago you could buy in ebay week by week nice 1g
slices at 100-150$/g. Now you won't get any below 250-300$/g, even not
10g-slices. Remember Kainsaz. Do you think, you will find it at 2.5$/g
again, like 2 years ago? When it's gone it's gone and the prices raise.
See the always identical pattern with observed falls. If material appears
for the first time, it is expensive. Soon, if it is a fall, where only a few
different sellers get material, price will drop remarkably, after a while,
depending how much material was set free, it becomes rare and the price
raise again, often remarkably outreaching the initial price, at which the
meteorite was sold for the first time.
If smth is gone, it's gone. Read Michael Blood's column, where he's
wondering, how expensive Gibeon is nowadays. No big wonder. Since the export
prohibition only old material is still available. Gibeon is an excellent
example, because in past it was by far the most common iron, smth like
Campo&Sikhote today. On each fair the equation was valuable: Where
meteorite, there Gibeon. Already in 2001, I remember, cause I wanted to buy
some, suddenly on the Munich show, there were only perhaps a quarter of the
amount of Gibeon, as the year before. The following 2 years, the dealers
still had their old price tags, but now it wasn't DEM anymore, but they were
in Euro (= doubled) and finally last year, there was a single half of a
table, where still entire Gibeons were available, the price I didn't took in
my notebook, because it was so expensive, that it was not interesting,
and the Sprichs still had a single large specimen.
(Btw. Andi and me still have some rough specimens for sale).
Like this it will be with Sikhote-Alin, as it's over - already hard to find
are meanwhile kg-pieces with regmaglypts
And of course the same will happen with all NWA-material.
Certainly it is difficult to estimate, how large the "overhang" of material
still is and when the prices will react, but be sure prices will raise
remarkably - sooner or later.

And then don't complain, that Mr.Buckleboo hadn't warned you!
Martin



 
  

 
Received on Tue 09 May 2006 07:43:42 AM PDT