[meteorite-list] The Trials and Tribulations in Dealing with Lando wners

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 00:45:07 +0100
Message-ID: <00a801cbd221$5f1de6e0$1d59b4a0$_at_de>

Oh Steve,

what a mythical transfiguration...

Of course I hear always Allende, Allende, Allende - when it comes about the
golden ages.
Steve, Allende is THE exception in history. A 3 tons stone fall, producing
myriads and myriads of small individuals, never happened before in
historical times and never happened since after. Allende was the all-time
NWA 869.

>I had bought meteorites for mere $10 to $20 per/lb.

And you and me and everyone could buy the very recent years meteorites at
3-4$ per/lb.
The main load of the world output - the W3 and W4 OCs from Sahara.
If you only include the inflation rates since the 1980ies.
And if you wanted them classified and with full coordinates from Oman 15-20
per pound in 1980ies' dollars.

And in no way they are inferior in scientific information value or in
quality to any of the old names,to a Davy, a Macy, a Renfrow, a Wellman, a
Long Island, a Hugoton.

And do you really think, that a Nininger or a Haag sold ever such chondrites
at such pennies?
Remember how Fletcher complained, who had a contract with Nininger, how
boring and rancid the stones always were, he brought him for that money.

Please, always the same, oh Gibeon sold from the truck at 50$/kg.
Today we're selling Campos from the truck at 11$/kg and Campo and
Muonionalustas at 30$/kg.
And Campo is an iron, wherefor in 19th century you had to pay more than 20$
A GRAM. And for my first Muoniona I paid 25$ a gram.

Sikhote, still 3-4 years ago for the best quality and Sikhote is simply the
Queen of irons,
you had to pay a standard rate per kilogram of 110 Haag-$, of 33 Nininger-$,
of 25 Foote-$, of 11 Ward-$ and of 10 Krantz-$ per kilogram.

And the best is, this incredible and historic absolutely unseen meteorite
ballpark dumping, we're not doing only with boring OCs and mass irons, we do
it with so weird things like brachinites, rumutiites, howardites, karoondas
and so on. Stuff, either not available at all in the good ol' days or fairly
unpayable then.

And fresh falls. Bassikounou, Hammami, Bensour, Zag, Tamdakht, Chergach,
Benguerir and so on?

When ever in history of mankind, you ever could buy a fresh observed stone
fall so cheap?
I'll tell you: Allende of course, and Alfianello short after the fall. And
that seems to have been already all.
Even Pultusk in its days, the 2 tons mass fall had cost a triple and
quintuple than any of the Maghreb falls.


>They were of purely scientific value.
 
A fairy tale is that.

>And there were several dealers back in the late 1800's and early 1900's
that had a substantial market for >meteorites.

And afterwards too.

Haag knew to use the media and to make a good advertising, and he brought so
many new collectors, and his achievements are extraordinary,
but he did not invent the meteorite trade neither private meteorite
collecting.

It's a myth, that meteorites would be dealt to a larger extent only in the
last 10 or 20 or 30 years.
When I started as a boy in the early 1980ies and also up into the 1990ies,
there were less different falls and finds available, as at the times of a
Ward or a Foote. The total offer equaled the 1900ers then finally, when the
first finds of Libya came to market.

Not a single one of the large and today famous collection, wasn't built up
by purchases from mineral or meteorite dealers. Some were even founded
firstly due major acquisitions from the private sector.
>From Vienna, to Paris, over London, Smithonian, New York, Chicago and so on.
The main load you found there and, with the exception of those where the
Antarctics are kept, you're finding still there, was acquired by the
purchase from dealers, finders or private donations.
And it's also not such a wonder, as the curators of these collections were
often very passionate private collectors by their own too.

If you take the prices today and then - then it is more than possible that
even despite the enormous increased output from the deserts and elsewhere
generated by the private sector of our days,
that the monetary volume of the meteorite "market" is lower than hundred
years ago.

Think about that.

Peary's widow got for the big iron chuck paid from the museum as much as the
estimated value of the annual exported grand total of meteorites from
NWA-wonderland. And NWA yield more than Antarctica.


>And some of the prices that they sold them for, corrected for current
values, would be comparable to today's >prices.

Yes, the minority.
The average was ways more expensive than today. Or to say it clear: Compared
to the prices of today, they bled the museums and private collectors dry.
Gosh last year I sold my last Dhurmsala cheaper, than it had cost throughout
the whole 19th century and my price was for the today's level not a bargain.


>It is getting ever more difficult for scientists to obtain meteorites
because of commercial demand.

Steve. In former times, you even hadn't a bulletin database, where the
holders of the stone are in the very most cases given. And you had no
internet. Today you only have to type the name or number of the meteorite
into google, + meteorite & sale - and you have your offers. A child of 8
years is not overstrained to do that and quite each and every beginning
collector without any preparatory qualifications knows after one year, where
to get his meteorites.

Please, Steve, I don't know at the moment, where you're living. Go to the
next big town. There any curator of any arts gallery, of any antiques
museum, of any technical collection, of each and every states library
knows exactly when and which of the top specimens they're interested in are
on the market and offered at which events, auctions and occasions and they
know the prices.
And all these fields are by far not so transparent and small and clearly
laid out than one has it with the global meteorite market. Full stop.

And btw. you know the budget problems, leave aside whether homemade or not,
of even many of the most renown institutional collections.
You have often the case, that these, which do classify meteorites do get
alone from the deposit samples so much meteoritic material more for free,
than the scientists there could ever acquire with their tight acquisition
budgets, and that despite the times of the all-time-low-prices. Not to
mention, what they would have to spend, if they try to find such materials
with own expeditions. Euromet 20 million $ spent - found stuff in
Aussieland, which a Bessey, a Hupe, a Cottingham, a Notkin, a Chladni Heir
will deliver them right to the door step for 20,000$.

Yes, the times they are changing.
You know Steve, just a week ago, I was typewriting old fall reports for the
Germs forum. Because we were interested there in sound phenomena occurring
with the fall. You know, who had written them? Woehler, Berzelius, Partsch..
and so on.
The topnotch meteorite scientists and curators of the best collections of
their times.
They were writing the fall description and the complete documentation of the
falls still by their own.
And none of them spared neither costs nor efforts to travel in person to the
fall site, to gather the data and eyewitness' reports and to purchase
material from the dealers or the locals.

That is very different today. Remember West/Mifflin? Today we even have
airplanes and the fall happened not directly in the jungle or in a
wilderness. Tons of photos we could admire. With happy faces...
But who came from the scientists to the field, from the curators?
The one and only one I could recover on the pictures was honorable Dr. Art
Ehlmann. And he is certainly not the youngest anymore. Ah and I vaguely
remember, wasn't it that we all had to smirk so much, when a meteorite
friend, employed at NASA, here on the list, was so horror-stricken, when he
recovered, that the trip to West could cost some money, which he maybe
wouldn't get compensated and additionally that he would have to spend some
spare-time?


So all in all and in all points:

There is definitely ZERO competition and ZERO opposition between Science &
Private Sector.

And that what "Science" got offered today by the private and the commercial
sector,
is so endlessly much better than ever in the 200 years before.

If some from the "Science" side refuse to accept this offer, for what
reasons ever,
then one cannot blame the commercialism for that.


Forgive me Steve, that all is really not personally meant,
I only feel always so disturbed, when I have to read somewhere always the
same wrong glorification of former times and the always same prejudices.

(Gosh, from the Smith-BBC-interview, containing some of the same prejudices,
we all have to suffer so much still today. Again and again it is warmed up,
found down even to the African blogs. That is so much more worse for that
legal complex than any Admire smashing or commerce ever can be.)

Nininger was in his best times, the same regarded as a shady vermin and
greedy dealer by many scientists - today they award medals with his
portrait. The same like Haag was regarded as the incarnation of evil (and
still is by some retards, still stuck somewhere in the 1980ies with their
minds).
So I felt to have to say something, because it wasn't like always in
ill-informed media, but here on the list.


>Boy I wish I had gotten all of those, too!

This we will hear in a hundred-voiced chorus in 10 years from now about the
period of 2000-2010, the REAL golden times of meteoritics, if not soon
somebody will curb that recent laws lunacy.

Best!
Martin


PS: But you're right, Steve, there seems to have been a period, where the
science side regarding the market felt asleep (but not in such a deep
slumber than all in all today in several former active countries).
In the 1980ies.. remember Zeitschel? For the Nininger/Huss collections, the
museums and universities still came to blows. Think about how London cheated
Arizona..
Zeitschel owned at these times the largest private collection of the World.
And he wanted to sell it. It sold like a lemon. He even addressed the
Meteoritical Society with his offer.
You can read it in their reports - they decided not to react on his request.
Only Tokyo was clever enough in the end. The price was so ridiculous, that
many of this list here today would buy it. Was a less than mediocre
five-digit-sum.
Was most probably the greatest lapse ever, caused by meteoricists
disregarding privateers.
Until then at least. Now similar lapses happen in several institutes
abstaining from purchasing NWAs, cause they're not sure about the legal
status, but to idle to check it.
And that what's going on now with laws, is Armageddon for science &
collectors likewise.

PPS: Murchison, I know someone who beats your story.
A German collector had read a note about that fall in his newspaper.
Curiously he wrote a letter addressed to the major of Murchison asking for
details about the fall. Well months later he found a parcel in his letter
box from Australia. A nice writing, how amazed they were in Murchison that
someone from so far away was interested in that what happened in their
village, and as a little acknowledgement they had included a fine stone, I
guess it was 150 grams or so as a gift.
But dooooooooon't tell that to the Englishman!


PPS: And destroying meteorites, Jeff.
Here a contemporary Pultusk-matchbox-micromount by the Krantz enterprise.
And from Krantz they bought all, Humboldt, Vienna, London, Paris, Smithonian
and so on.
London e.g. bought in 1868 from Krantz, 17 stones of Pultusk, weighing
5.8kgs.
And cheap they weren't.
But try to sell today a Bassikonou for 300 bucks to London... forget about
it.


http://kuerzer.de/Pultkramic









-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Steve
Schoner
Gesendet: Montag, 21. Februar 2011 18:54
An: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] The Trials and Tribulations in Dealing with
Lando wners

How about prices for meteorites on Ebay? Surely the landowners can see this
and the dollar signs begin rolling in their minds.

When I started searching back in the late 1960's it was a "handshake
agreement." And meteorites went for mere dollars per/pound. No one, except
the scientific community, and a few meteorite "nuts" like me, really cared
about them.

I remember the days when I bought pounds of Allende, freshly recovered for
less than $10 per/lb. And that day in Jan of 1970 when I obtained a 6 oz
fresh piece of Murchison, that fell the previous year direct from Australia
by one that saw it fall for a mere $50. I was offered by the same person
two other stones. One at .75 lbs, for $75, and another at 1.2 lbs for $120.

Boy I wish I had gotten all of those, too! I still have my 6 oz one in a
safe deposit box. At today's prices figure out the price of that one?

Why have the prices of meteorites increased from mere dollars per/lb to
dollar's per/gram now---

Marketing.

My friend Bob Haag was the first to really make the market. I would never
have believed it then. I remember the day when he came to my house in a
beat up pickup back in 1980. He had a shoebox of nice meteorites offering
to sell them to me. I picked out a few, and asked how much. When he did
the total and showed me the bill I was floored. Dollars per gram. I had
bought meteorites for mere $10 to $20 per/lb. And I had over the years
bought small cut and polished pieces from Nininger and Huss for mere cents
per gram. Harvey Nininger often quoted the price for me over the phone to a
landowner when I made a find. And that was enough said to seal the deal
then.

I have never been an efficient dealer in meteorites. I just don't have the
"marketing skills." But Bob Haag did. And he made the mark.

Every successful dealer of meteorites came after him.

But current marketing between the many dealers have made the mark greater,
and now the dollars signs are flying high in the minds of landowners. Legal
issues are the norm.

When I was collecting starting back in the early '60's, very very few were
even interested in meteorites. They were of purely scientific value. But
that is not to say that monetary value was never an issue. There are many
cases in history where fresh meteorite falls have created monetary values.
And there were several dealers back in the late 1800's and early 1900's that
had a substantial market for meteorites. And some of the prices that they
sold them for, corrected for current values, would be comparable to today's
prices.

I think that the Great Depression might have depressed the interest in
marketing meteorites. And that is when Harvey Nininger made his mark, and
pretty much set the price all the way into the 1970's.

Another point that Jeff brought up is very aspect of current marketing...

The loss to science.

It is getting ever more difficult for scientists to obtain meteorites
because of commercial demand.

The point he made with regards to SNC's God help science if people start
eating martian meteorites. Stupid though such a notion sounds, there are
cases where people actually ate Egyptian mummy dust to prolong their lives.
And such dust was being sold in the 1800's. The result of that was a
crackdown by the scientific community on the practice.

Many of the antiquity laws came out of it.

And now with prices sky high for any meteorite, Nations are making laws
about meteorites and exporting them, or prohibiting export of a so called
"national treasure."

Australia, Argentina and Oman have such laws now. I am sure Nations will
follow.

It is always demand and monetary value that makes this trend.

These trends are virtually impossible to reverse once in place

Steve Schoner
http://www.petroslides.com

BTW: Because of the Egyptian antiquity laws, and antiquity laws of many
Nations today... Have you had a dose Egyptian mummy dust?

Message: 24
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2011 07:41:36 -0500
From: Jeff Grossman <jgrossman at usgs.gov>
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] The Trials and Tribulations in Dealing
        with Landowners
To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Message-ID: <4D625D80.6000206 at usgs.gov>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Why don't we discuss the real issue with this thread? Is nobody else
offended by the idea of destroying meteorites for commercial gain?

I do realize that the scientific value of Brenham pallasites is extremely
low. Many hundreds of kg are held by museums, so chances are that the
destruction by dealers of a few hundred kg more to extract the olivine will
not result in irreversible harm to science.

But what if some cult placed a high value on ritually consuming
Martian/lunar meteorites or angrites, or CAIs, and the price for powdered
meteorites skyrocketed? Would it be ethical to destroy these meteorites for
profit? And, are such practices harmful, in the long-run, to both science
and the avocation of meteorite collecting?

A large part of the tension between the scientific and collector
communities, including the creation of much-reviled export and ownership
laws in some countries, arises from the perception that national scientific
treasures are being lost. This sort of practice by dealers could make the
situation so much worse.

Jeff


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Received on Mon 21 Feb 2011 06:45:07 PM PST