AW: [meteorite-list] Murchison Price Difference

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Oct 5 07:44:37 2006
Message-ID: <005401c6e873$9c673390$4f41fea9_at_name86d88d87e2>

Each meteorite has its time.

Nowadays the usual price for Murchison is 60-100$/g.
7-5 years ago it was at 50-100$/g.
A German collector told me, that shortly after the fall, he sent a letter to
Murchison enquiring about the circumstances of this new fall.
A while later a parcel came back, with nice wording and because in Murchison
they were so delighted, that somebody from such a far country paid attention
to that fall, they added a 50g stone for free as a little thank you.

It is very simple. Meteorites are the rarest good on Earth. If from a
locales the lion share is once distributed, the prices are getting higher.
The pattern with new falls nowadays is always the same. First there is a
hype, many fear to miss out, the first one or two offerers make the price.
Depending on the quantity available and the number of additional offerors
getting access to the material, the price will fall.
After a while, when most of the material is gone, the prices will raise
again, not so seldom transcending the initial prices.

To expect a meteorite offeror to give away his goodies at the all-time
lowest price, is silly. In acquiring material, he has to bear also often the
same price fluctuations as the collector too and anyway they are working
with lower profit than your next Mom&Pop grocery shop around the corner.
To expect a dealer to sell an Allende at 30cents/g, a Zagami at 50$/g or a
Gibeon at 30$/kg, because in some golden days they were sold like this or to
snigger at collectors, who are willing to purchase at higher prices today is
so meaningful as to pay at present 30$/g for Campo because Ward and Cohen
did so 100 years ago or to give 8$/g and 12$/g for Sikhote and Brahin as it
was paid a dozen years ago or to spent 600$/g for a desert acapulcoite.

The supply of meteoritical material is extremely limited, a fact of which
many collectors, especially the newer ones aren't aware and in future only a
very small fraction of that amount of material hitting the "market" in our
fat years will be available.
The comparably easy availability and the extreme low prices are solely
caused by the evanescently small number of specialized collectors, the
release of the new desert finds within a few years only and finally by the
dedication of the professional and non-professional meteorite offerors.

The transfiguration and praise of the good ol' Golden days I can't share.
Certainly in the 70ies, 80ies and partially still in the 90ies locales today
highly paid were cheap (but by far not all), but there were at the best not
more than perhaps 200 different locales permanently available, we had a
handful of offerors, the communication was slow and the possibility for a
collector to compare prices was very limited.
Now, those very days, the collector can choose from 10,000 meteorites,
among them the absolutely rarest types at ridiculous low prices, which one
in former times simply couldn't find or where one had to go in debt to
afford a specimen larger than a fingernail.
Internet lead to a much higher transparency, the number of offerors and
collectors hasn't increased to such an extend, that the meteorite scene
wouldn't be cosy and familial anymore (or for some: so exclusively), on
contrary through the possibility of immediate communication via internet,
the members in the Petri dish got much more closer than ever.
(O.k. disadvantage is, that you have to abide such insupportable prattlers
like me).
Maybe from the psychology of collecting the veterans could have the
sensation, that the present times are poorer as it takes much less efforts
to get a rare stone into one's collection, so that there isn't such a thrill
left.
But does this change the properties of the material, have the stones
themselves changed??
Does a remarkably lower price derogate the properties of and the fascination
about a meteorite?

O tempora, o mores - I bet in 20 or already in 10 years lugubriously we will
think back to the early years of the new millennium, where one could buy a
Moon at thousand bucks, a howardite at 5$ and where we had the full palette
of types. Legends will be built about that Canadian selling chondrites by
the tons at prices of fancy cakes, about the keen Russian hunters blowing
out lunaites - one slice each to fill the tanks of their jeeps with diesel -

about a funny guy always jumping in the plane, when he heard about a new
fall, spending 90% of his income for travels, about collectors bitterly
complaining, that the sellers betrayed them in asking 3$ to much shipment
costs for their 20g ureilite slices, about buyers rejecting offers for Moons
at 500$, cause it would be to risky, about two strange guys bringing out
each week small polished sliced of the most whack exotics throwing them away
in hundred auctions per week, about flame wars between dealers, whether 5$
more or less per gram for an eucrite would be a bottomless daylight robbery,
about some French carving cheesy figurines from meteorites, about desert
hunters not picking up chondrites, cause they weren't worth a tinker's cuss
and finally
about 3 boyz from Germany, who augured this development years ago without
being prophets.

And the archives of this list will be like a far and very strange land of
wonders and fairy tales.

Enjoy these days in meteorite-paradise before it will be lost!
Martin


-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces_at_meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces_at_meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von David
Weir
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 5. Oktober 2006 11:52
An: dmerchan_at_rochester.rr.com
Cc: Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] Murchison Price Difference

Don,

Perhaps some people remember that Murchison typically sold for $30-40/g
a dozen years ago and refuse to see the justification for such high
pricing today, while others newer to the scene are content to buy high.

David
______________________________________________
Meteorite-list mailing list
Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Received on Thu 05 Oct 2006 07:44:25 AM PDT