[meteorite-list] How about a thread to discuss hunting ethics - west

From: michael cottingham <mikewren_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 18:56:20 -0700
Message-ID: <06821DD0-A10A-41F2-903C-7F5A81CCDF36_at_gilanet.com>

Hello,

Not to get into this argument too deep, but I think you (Jason) are
leaving out a very important part of your pricing train of thought.
First, you got to hunt in an established strewn field, one that took
many people hundreds of hours to establish. There were many fields
that were searched with NO results. Those hunters in the first 10 days
did a lot of work to make it possible for people to come later and
find stones with a lot more ease. Also, I remember you asking the
list if you could get information to make it easier for you to find
stones, because you did not want to start from scratch. It was easier
for you than those in the first wave. Also, I met you on Mr. Enders
farm. The first and only pay to play game out there in the fields of
West. That pay to play thing at Enders was established by myself. I
taught Mr. Enders about meteorites, I raised the prices paid to him
and I got his fields open to over 50 meteorite hunters. I taught him
that it was best if he charged people $50.00 a day and set a gram
price for what they found. Mr Enders has made over ~$15,000.00 by
opening up his fields to us. Also, because of this pay to play thing,
over 100 stones were recovered over his property, so far. When I first
met him, he refused permission to let anyone hunt anymore on his land.
I spent over 3 hours teaching and establishing a framework for him.
One that seemed fair and good for all at the time. As a result,
several weeks later you and your father were able to go there, park
your car, have a base, and immediately begin hunting meteorites. Yes,
your cost per gram may be lower, but in reality, you had very little
time invested in your hunt. Just some thoughts...

Best Wishes

Michael
On Apr 2, 2009, at 5:45 PM, Jason Utas wrote:

> Steve,
>
>> Remind us all what weights you found and how much the trip cost
>> you and your
>> dad, and the cost of the time your dad had to invest in lost
>> Medical Doctor
>> wages to find what you guys found? OK, leave out of the formula
>> what your
>> dad's time is worth, that is none of our business. Why don't you
>> just figure
>> your time invested as being worth $15/hour, for the total cost.
>
> 4.2g, 6.2g plus a 0.2g chip, 175.4g, and 2.4g.
>
> - A total weight about on par with what I saw other people had found
> in a week or so of hunting about a month ago, when there were more
> stones being found. True, our weights aren't typical, but I can only
> ascribe that to the fact that 1) I'm good at seeing smaller stones,
> and that 2) we spent some time farther down the strewn-field, hoping
> to come across places people hadn't looked.
>
> Lost doctor's wages? Peter had that time scheduled as time off for my
> spring break as of several months ago. Nothing was cancelled or
> moved, his month had a standard number of hours.
>
> But how much did you lose in wages? This is really relevant to my
> point down below...kind of a side note here.
>
>> Now, recalculate what your cost per gram would have been if you
>> didn't find
>> your big rock, as few hunters were as lucky as you were in finding
>> such a big
>> rock.
>
> Other hunters generally found more meteorites in the 10-100g range,
> though the average, from what I've read, was between ~20g and ~40g.
> The average weight of the stones we found was 47g, not counting the
> chip as a separate stone, which is only slightly above average, so
> your point is kind of moot. Yes we found one big one, but, on
> average, our finds were normal.
>
>> Also, break down what it cost YOU for your finds per gram and
>> break down
>> what price per gram your dad paid for all of HIS grammage of rocks
>> he found, if
>> you would for us?
>
> It was both of us, that was the haul. I used the total cost of the
> trip for the pair of us and the total 'grammage' of our finds in my
> calculation.
>
>> By the way, how much are you willing to sell some of your
>> specimens for?
>> Would you sell them for double your cost, for a not so "clinically
>> insane"
>> price of say maybe $24/g? At that price, I might be a buyer.
>
> We're collectors, not dealers - you know that.
>
> But you're asking a question which raises some interesting issues.
> While the initial story of "no one has stones they're willing to sell"
> has passed, many hunters and collectors already went and found their
> own stones. And while a collector who didn't go might be sitting
> there saying 'crap, no one's selling,' I think it might also be
> interesting to note that demand should be seriously down for a fall
> that was accessible to most american collectors who were willing to
> take the time to go and find their own stone.
> Many of the people who would have bought from dealers have merely gone
> and found their own, and the people who didn't...well, it's a new
> fall, an L6, and it's really nothing special in terms of appearance or
> science. Of course, it looks like a new fall, which usually retail
> for, $10-30ish per gram, Park Forest raising the bar there. Even
> historic falls usually go for $10-15/g.
> In fact, I believe I can recall a nice 1/2 end cut of Leedey you
> personally sold on ebay a few months back for a little less than $10
> per gram.
>
> At the same time, I find it odd that you, who walked away with over
> 2kg of material, think it prudent to charge $65/g, give or take.
> That's $120,000. Not bad for a few week's worth of meteorite hunting,
> especially if your costs were in the $100,000 range. Our trip wound
> up costing us around $2,000, because we booked our flights the night
> before. And since the flights took up the vast majority of that,
> well, it makes things interesting. I've done some numbers. Had we
> stayed a full week extra and found the same amount of meteorites (that
> we had found in the previous *five* days), it would have cost us about
> $500-600 more, and the price per gram of our finds would have come
> down to about $7/g.
> But you came away with 2kg. If you spent the full amount that we did
> for the two of us, on yourself only, you paid $1/g. If you spent
> $4,000, you spent $2/g. If you somehow managed to spend $10,000 on
> your trip, well - you would only need to sell 150 grams of material at
> your price of $65/g to cover your costs.
> You've asked some pretty 'off' questions, so here are a few of my own
> - how much of your stock have you sold, and how much money have you
> made?
>
> Regards,
> Jason
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Received on Thu 02 Apr 2009 09:56:20 PM PDT