[meteorite-list] More on the Lorton... or Lorton hears a Who ?

From: cdtucson at cox.net <cdtucson_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 9:30:20 -0500
Message-ID: <20100129093020.TG5LX.440699.imail_at_fed1rmwml35>

Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.
John Lennon

--
Carl or Debbie Esparza
Meteoritemax
---- Jeff Grossman <jgrossman at usgs.gov> wrote: 
> I have a problem with collectors who think a museum is "hording" when it 
> acquires a specimen for its collection.  There is no intrinsic right of 
> the public to be able to own buy and trade in every meteorite that is 
> found. The public is well-served by museums like the Smithsonian, which 
> use interesting objects like this for research and educational purposes, 
> while curating them for posterity.
> 
> The flip side of this is that in the US, there is no intrinsic right of 
> government institutions to confiscate legally owned meteorites.  This is 
> also good.  Clearly, the Smithsonian is attempting no such thing.
> 
> As long as we're talking about ownership, I was at the site of the fall 
> on Jan 21.  At this time, the roofers were still on site, having just 
> finished patching the roof.  The only other visitors who had arrived by 
> this time were several of my colleagues from the Smithsonian, members of 
> the local media (TV news) and one well-known collector/dealer who had 
> flown in from the western US on a red-eye.  The collector, in front of 
> me and the media, convinced the roofers both to give him the damaged 
> roofing shingles with the hole, and then to go back up to the roof and 
> retrieve for him the piece of plywood with the hole in it, from under 
> the new shingles.  I've been wondering since then, who legally owns 
> these artifacts?  The roofers had almost certainly been asked to fix the 
> damage and cart away the debris (but obviously, I didn't see their 
> contract).  Did they, at this point, own the debris?  What if there was 
> a fragment of the meteorite embedded in the debris? (I don't think there 
> was, but there could well be dust.) Who would own that?
> 
> Jeff
> 
> On 2010-01-29 2:25 AM, Richard Kowalski wrote:
> > I've been informed privately that it was apparently the Smithsonian that contacted the owner of the land and offering payment.
> >
> > I didn't mean to slight any hunter or dealer by my suggestion that one contacted the land owner...
> >
> > I'm a firm believer that sufficient samples need to be submitted for classification and research but I have a huge problem with some researchers that feel they need to horde every milligram for no reason other than to keep it out of the collector market.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Richard Kowalski
> > http://fullmoonphotography.net
> > IMCA #1081
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >    
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dr. Jeffrey N. Grossman       phone: (703) 648-6184
> US Geological Survey          fax:   (703) 648-6383
> 954 National Center
> Reston, VA 20192, USA
> 
> 
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Received on Fri 29 Jan 2010 09:30:20 AM PST