[meteorite-list] Chelyabinsk: six months of eBay sales

From: Galactic Stone & Ironworks <meteoritemike_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 19:11:16 -0400
Message-ID: <CAKBPJW-rvCNXgC=U2Yzn9BXr52cL_qJdrr6WfZ15ScY1e7SmuA_at_mail.gmail.com>

Hi Rob,

This is awesome. Some of the numbers are interesting, if not surprising.

Average cost per gram is about typical for OC falls in Russia - a
little less than US/Canada/Europe falls and more than most Saharan
falls.

However, given the global attention Chelya received and the massive
shockwave (a first of this scale in modern history, second only to
Carancas.), the price seems a like a bargain for collectors. $11/gram
for an unprecedented fall - if the Chelya body had exploded lower in
the atmosphere, the effects would have been catastrophic. Windows
blown out for miles. Building collapsed. Thousands of injured
witnesses. Captured world attention for months and is still getting
press. It's gorgeous when cut. It's gorgeous when fresh and uncut.
It's arguably a hammer fall - surely something was struck by that
widespread shower of stones, and if not, the shockwave damage should
qualify for collector "hammer" purposes. This fall has everything
collectors want and it was a global wake-up call for the entire world
to be more cognizant of the other small asteroids/comets targeting our
fragile blue marble.

At $11/g, this is a steal.

Of course, as you said Rob, this number itself doesn't take into
account the notations you made about quality/type of material, and
this material shows a lot of faces - fresh, weathered, IMB lithology,
"regular" lithology, dual lithology, anomalous specimens (inclusions,
weirdness), cut and uncut. I am guessing the $11/g number is seen
with a few lucky eBay snipers and/or the more weathered and less
attractive pieces.

Myself, I have paid up to $40 a gram for Chelyabinsk - depending on
the situation. I paid $40/g for gorgeous beautiful uncut stones that
were almost-pristine and free of oxidation. I paid substantially less
for tiny crumbs or weathered frags.

22.1 kilos seems a bit small for a fall that likely produced much more
material on the ground than the eBay total suggests. (who knows what
is sitting at the bottom of Lake Chebarkul, rotting in the chilly
muck.) Of course, this is still a useful number because it can be
compiled with known quantities that entered the market outside of eBay
- some of which likely ended up being flipped on eBay.

Nice work Rob. I'd love to see the spreadsheet.

Best regards,

MikeG

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On 8/29/13, Matson, Robert D. <ROBERT.D.MATSON at saic.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> If anyone is interested, for the past 6 months I've been compiling the
> closing prices, masses and sellers of eBay Chelyabinsk meteorite sales
> in an Excel spreadsheet. The dataset is quite large now (1250 points)
> and includes all eBay sales of Chelyabinsk masses greater than or equal
> to 3 grams. (Best-offer sales were not included since that price is not
> reported by eBay.) There were a few sales that did not provide masses
> (though clearly higher than my 3-gram cutoff), but since I was
> interested
> in tracking the price-per-gram metric, I excluded them.
>
> A summary:
>
> Total auctions: 1250
> Period covered: 2/27/2013 - 8/28/2013
> Total mass: 22192.6 grams
> Total cost: $248,393
> Average price-per-gram: $11.19
>
> Since price-per-gram obviously depends a great deal on the quality of
> the specimen (percentage of crust, overall shape, degree of weathering,
> whether IMB or not, evidence of orientation, presence of flow lines or
> roll-over lips, etc.) I tried to add notes for each sale estimating the
> percentage of crust, presence of weathering, whether the specimen
> appeared to be an IMB, or anything else I thought relevant.
>
> If enough people are interested in the spreadsheet, rather than email it
> individually to each person perhaps someone can host it for me.
>
> Having spent over 30 hours over the last 6 months compiling all this
> data, I probably won't continue to update it much longer. I figured
> the nearly quarter-million-dollar sales mark was a good hopping off
> point to mention it on the List. I think you'll find the master plot
> of the PPG over time quite interesting, and I wouldn't be surprised if
> this is the most detailed price history of a meteorite ever constructed.
>
> Best wishes,
> Rob
>
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Received on Thu 29 Aug 2013 07:11:16 PM PDT