[meteorite-list] Question: Just How ...?

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2007 09:48:32 -0500
Message-ID: <5oalv2tm0vr5qtblid2jbqgmtvebv7u7lb_at_4ax.com>

On Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:00:45 +0100, you wrote:

>one important possibility for the veterans of pre-internet times is missing
>:-)
>
>12. Fairs & Shows.
>
>I got my first meteorite in 1981 on the Munich show as a boy. A schoolmate's
>father was paleo-biologist at the Bavarian states collections, so we got
>free tickets. As I was highly interested in astronomy, I really was
>wonderstruck, that meteorites weren't locked away in scientists' labs, but
>that indeed one could buy them!
>Of course I took one.
>3 weeks later I was somewhat disappointed, cause I found out, that the stone
>which was sold to me, was "only" a tektite.
>Soooo I couldn't await next years' show, there I bought of course a real
>one! A 50gram individual of Mundrabilla from famous Walter Zeitschel,
>to whome I send again here my best wishes to hospital!

Out here in the country I never run across meteorites at fairs or shows. In
fact, in all my life I've seen exactly one meteorite without having actually
bought it myself over the internet. That was an iron one I saw at a flea market
as a early teen in the 1980s. It was about fist sized, and even never having
seen a meteorite "in real life" before it was obvious what it was without even
asking. At over $100 and with the guy only passing through, though, there was
no chance of my getting it (if he had stuck around, I'd have done some serious
allowance saving). I did buy a number of nice tektites (nice ones, even looking
at the from a more experienced/jaded perspective today) and still have (most) of
them. Back then, the lunar origin of tektites was still pretty mainstream.
I've shared a photo of one of them on the list before:

http://webpages.charter.net/garrison6328/tektite.jpg

Weighs about 40 grams. And, if you are counting impactites, then it pushes my
"first meteorite" back into the 1980s.
Received on Fri 16 Mar 2007 10:48:32 AM PDT