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

From: Richard Montgomery <rickmont_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 20:10:17 -0700
Message-ID: <7AA80964468E4B278955F386BA8D0763_at_bosoheadPC>

Howdy List,
Regarding Chelyabinsk specimens and their varying prices and more: I wasn't
able to go there, and in another situation we all may have...but I bought
one stone from Michael, and a variety of peas from Rob, simply because THEY
were there, part of the recovery story. I was willing to (gladly) agree to
terms (both extremely competitive and reasonable) because of their story
behind the recovery. Meteorites, and their recovery. Nice pedigree
Richard M


----- Original Message -----
From: "Galactic Stone & Ironworks" <meteoritemike at gmail.com>
To: "Matson, Robert D." <ROBERT.D.MATSON at saic.com>
Cc: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2013 4:11 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Chelyabinsk: six months of eBay sales


> 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 11:10:17 PM PDT