[meteorite-list] 200 gram Sutters Mill

From: Michael Gilmer <meteoritemike_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 12:07:04 -0400
Message-ID: <CAKBPJW-228qD4nc1_WOMUU3ruYFwor5NCKiWZaN8v8tAcaAedw_at_mail.gmail.com>

Hi Paul and List,

Well, the person has been shopping the stone widely to more than a
dozen different dealers and collectors. So, that removes some of the
assumed right to confidentiality. Although, I will not divulge the
name of the person shopping it. At $1000/g for a 205g stone (the
asking price), that works out to a cool $200,000 - I seriously doubt
that any collector or dealer would pay that much. That tells me that
the seller is not very familiar with the workings of the meteorite
market. At any rate, even if the stone is genuine, unless the seller
backs down on that asking price, he will have a very expensive
paperweight for a long time.

Let's assume for a moment that the stone is genuine, just for the sake
of argument. If it is publicly announced, it will attract a lot of
attention from the meteorite world. The media would be less
interested now, because the Sutter's Mill fall is now old news - the
news cycles in today's world are very short. But, if the seller
trumpeted the alleged dollar value ($200,000), that would attract some
media attention (because the media cares primarily about money), but I
doubt the IRS would come knocking unless he/sell tried to sell it -
simply because transactions over $10,000 are routinely reported to the
government by banks.

This stone, if real, would be of great interest to science and
collectors, but unless someone authenticates it, it is just another
story that may or may not be true. I was hoping someone on this List
could say - "Yes, I was there and examined the specimen in person."
If nobody has examined this stone, then I would think it is not
authentic - or the owner is very paranoid about going public with it.
Of course, if the latter was true (paranoia), then why shop the stone
around to multiple dealers?

Best regards and happy huntings,

MikeG

On 6/20/12, Paul Gessler <cetuspa at shaw.ca> wrote:
> So much for confidentiality.
> $250,000...No problem!
> At least before the others are reported.
>
> -Paul Gessler
>
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Received on Wed 20 Jun 2012 12:07:04 PM PDT