[meteorite-list] Photo of a K-chondrite / Could this be one of the rarest meteorites found?

From: Jason Utas <meteoritekid_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:17:06 -0800
Message-ID: <93aaac890911181317l1a5db2d5q54fd73ebc6541e21_at_mail.gmail.com>

Hello Frank, All,

The trouble with that example is that it really supports both
viewpoints, due to its context. First and foremost, its type was
extremely uncommon at the time (Eucrites are now rather commonplace),
and second, there was very little available of both the type and of
the given fall. The trouble with taking into account what Ward or
Merrill considered to be the primary determinants of "value" is the
assumption that both value and rarity go hand in hand.
While there is some association between the two, well, look at the
market. You have unique meteorites like Portales Valley selling for
$20-30/g, and relatively common rocks like, say, Ash Creek, going for
the same amount. [Don't go off on me - I'm not complaining - just
pointing out an irrationality in the marketplace.]

Price is determined by marketing and supply and demand - not rarity,
though it is a contributing factor.
Hence Ward didn't value the other "differentiated" meteorites as much,
even though they were grouped together at the time.

When reading about meteorites in older literature, one will often see
comparisons made between such and so meteorite and a similar meteorite
that was recently found. This is because the classification schemes
at the time didn't provide adequate groupings for the number of
chemically and structurally distinct meteorites being found. They
didn't have "Eucrites," so they compared to known meteorites that were
similar...such a system of categorization would provide for skewed
senses of "rarity" (not that our current system is any better at it).
And since most modern meteorite types were grouped together, rarity
was determined rather differently at the time, with the availability
of a given fall determining "rarity," because "types" were as yet
ill-defined.
Thus what was considered rare a hundred years ago might not fit the
bill today - though, as I noted above, even Ward and Merrill appear to
have bought into the hype surrounding finds with low total known
weights, so I consider their points of view to be at least somewhat
collector/market oriented.

Regards,
Jason

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 10:11 PM, Frank Cressy <fcressy at prodigy.net> wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> Thought this might be of some interest concerning the rarest meteorite, at least from a historical viewpoint.? At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Henry A. Ward thought Nobleborough (1823 Maine fall) was one of the rarest of the meteorites?he owned.? At this time Ward owned one of the world?s largest meteorite collections?that was on par with the national collections in Vienna, London, and Paris.? The Ward-Coonley collection (now part of the Field Museum collection in Chicago) contained 603 different locations in 1904 and weighed nearly 2500 kilograms.? In a collection catalog of the same year, Ward stated that the Nobleborough meteorite, the third recovered meteorite fall in the U.S., was the ?rarest American aerolite? [stony meteorite].???At this time, there were other stony meteorites with a smaller preserved weight such as Deal (~30 gms.) and Bethlehem (13 gms.), but they were ordinary chondrites.? Nobleborough was a rare,
> ?differentiated stony meteorite, and only four had fallen or been found in the U.S. to that time.? Two were eucrites, Nobleborough (~78 gms TPW) and Petersburg (1.8 kg.).?? Frankfort (stone) (650 gms) was a howardite and Bishopville (5.9 kg.) an aubrite.? Most of the Nobleborough mass had been lost and collections had only small specimens.? Merrill (1934), in writing about valuation of meteorites, lists three main factors that determined their value; present known weight, petrographic composition, and number of owners of pieces.? About Nobleborough, he noted:?? ?The climax is reached, however, in the case of the stone of Nobleboro [Nobleborough], Maine of which there was originally from four to six pounds, but seventy-eight grams are now accounted for, distributed among eleven collections, seven of which record only ?splinters?.?
>
> Needless to say, most curators were extremely reluctant to part with any of the Nobleborough meteorite from their cabinets and no doubt Ward was ecstatic to have acquired a 19 gram specimen for his.? As for myself, I too would certainly like a "splinter" in my collection.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Frank
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Received on Wed 18 Nov 2009 04:17:06 PM PST