[meteorite-list] provenance

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:16:54 +0100
Message-ID: <003801ccebf4$dd185a10$97490e30$_at_de>

Hi Doug,

it was meant for fun, not for the silly discrimination which meteorites
would be better than others.

Though for an extreme purist of provenance and pedigree, those new finds
could be indeed ideal.

Cause he is then the founder of the pedigree, able to control the growth of
the meteorite's family tree, that what he is missing so often with his
historic specimens and their gaps from the day they once were picked up to
the day he put it in his showcase.

Do you remember still the times of the Dar al Ganis?
There for the collector it was something new and something extremely
thrilling,
that you could become the owner of a complete find or a main mass and no
matter whether it was an old OC.
And that for the same reasons I tried to mention.

Because in the post-Nininger-, post-Huss-, pre-desert-era with its only 2500
meteorites + Antarctics, that was really a difficult task.

And if you remember those desert finds, they had a special prestige too,
Lucky 13, Calcalong, DaG 400, NWA 032...

That opened a new aspect and new possibilities in meteorite collecting.


Well of course it's the individual habit and taste, which particular
meteorites will make the individual collector happy.
Collecting of, in a manner of speaking - "vintage" meteorites - sorry for
the flat joke, all they have their 4.5 billion years - has without doubt
also very satisfying and interesting aspects.

Though I find also the idea fascinating and attractive, that - although one
needs certainly some patience - that in 40, 50 years I can say - I lived and
participated in the Golden Age of the Big Harvest, where so many of the
today so prominent (and desirable) meteorites were recovered.
Aura and patina - just some patience and they will come.

Doug, wouldn't you love to jump in the time-machine to be there, when
Shergotty was distributed, or to gather one of the first Krinov-Sikhotes -
or to the year, where the now so popular Murchisons were sent for pennies
around the globe? And I'm convinced, that they in their very beginning were
as boring for the collectors like today for the historics fan a Tamdakht or
a Bassikonou is boring.

Huh funny thought, that then in 50, 100 years they could speak about the
people we have here on the list, and it could be well possible, as we have
an inflation of communication compared to then, that the collectors will
speak about them like today about Foote or Ward and so on.

Meteorites are the oldest matter we can grasp, we are getting old...
If we allow us only a little longer interval on the time bar as a
perspective, instead to pause in the here & now,
then, I tink, these new finds could develop a very thrilling
attractiveness..

Best wishes!
Martin





PS: >That's a new one on me!

And
> Respectfully, who made that rule? "A meteorite is born, when it is
published in the Bulletin."

The convention :-(

Unpublished meteorites tend to get forgotten with time.
And then they are just like those meteorites, which remained unfound.

Note btw. also with the known meteorites and the tkws,
especially the mass finds, that there in the end and quoted since,
were always the weights, once published and overtaken in the Bulletins
respectively in the first Catalogues.
No matter how much was found later on after the first report in literature.

Or take a more recent fall, like Lampyairie or what his name was.
Hardly anyone remembers it after 10 years, and as it wasn't recorded in the
Bulletin,
I fear in another 20 years that fall will never have existed.
Received on Wed 15 Feb 2012 10:16:54 AM PST