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

From: Michael Farmer <mike_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 10:36:30 -0700
Message-ID: <8B193727-C1C1-4818-A2EB-EEA4F4623B05_at_meteoriteguy.com>

eBay is not the world market, and sadly these dealers are cutting their own throats, selling non-stop even after they are in the profit. Lunacy. There is a thing called market saturation, you can only sell so many of the same item and then your customers are tapped out.
Smart people would stop selling for a few years.
These guys will sell out soon and then be crying as they have no more Chelyabinsk and the price rises. The same thing happened during Park Forest and Ash Creek, now try to find those things.
I have put thousands and thousands of Chelyabinsk in storage, will get them out in a decade or so. Bob Haag told me a story about Esquel, that after he bought the main mass, Al Lang and Ray Myer and Blaine Reed bought a 50 kilo chunk that remained in Argentina, which they promptly sold for $1-2 gram back in the 80s. Haag just pulled his from the market, waited until they sold it all, then popped back out and has made millions. They have none.

With hundreds and hundreds of chelyabinsk on eBay daily, how can the price do anything but go down? Quality has also gone down, you are seeing mostly after snowmelt material, low quality and ugly, that affects price as well. One can not just look at the price and say that the market is "in ruin". 90% of my customers are not on eBay or interested in the endless scams and problems that come with buying or selling there.

Michael Farmer

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 30, 2013, at 10:25 AM, <valparint at aol.com> wrote:

> Sorry about the previous post - itchy trigger finger.
>
> I've been doing some similar record keeping for ebay sales and can add this about Chelyabinsk specimens >= 3 grams:
>
> Through the end of March, the average cost per gram, including shipping, was about $35.
>
> This declined steadily. For August sales, the figure is closer to $8.
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul Swartz
> IMCA 5204
> MPOD (send me a picture, please)
>
>>>> 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
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Received on Fri 30 Aug 2013 01:36:30 PM PDT