Tuesday 21 June 2011

Blaine Reed Meteorites List #105 21JUN2011

Blaine Reed Meteorites List #105 21JUN2011

Blaine Reed
P.O. Box 1141
Delta, CO 81416
Ph/fax (970) 874-1487
………………………………………………………LIST 105

June 21, 2011

Dear Collectors,

I am finally getting caught up after an endless series of trips and visitors so I am finally getting a chance to put an offering together (a bit late I admit, but the last visitor was here until late this morning). 

This is yet another offering of picked up in Tucson or consigned stuff (mostly consigned stuff actually). 

I do have yet more traveling planned for fairly soon (I will be gone the weekend of July 4th and yet again July 7th through about July 12th), but these should not greatly affect taking and shipping orders from this list. 

HENBURY, Australia: Medium octahedrite (IIIAB). Found 1931.
This is a nice little end piece. The cut and etched face is roughly 25mm x 15mm or so. The remainder is wire brushed and has a nice thumb-printed shape. A nice display piece!
64.5 gram end piece – 30mm x 18mm x 25mm - $100

SIKHOTE-ALIN, Russia: Coarsest octahedrite (IIAB). Fell February 12, 1947.
This is a really nice shaped small shrapnel fragment. It has a fantastic torn shape and a pleasing dark brown color (this was only lightly brushed). This stuff, believe it or not, is getting very hard to come by. There was VERY little available at the Denver spring show and it was priced at or slightly higher than this superior specimen.
9.9 gram lightly brushed shrapnel fragment – 30mm x 15mm x 12mm - $9

NWA 906: (H3.8). Found June 2001. Tkw = 1031 grams.
This is a nice end piece with one edge cut off (kind of a "book end" cut). This has quite a lot of metal in a medium brown matrix, so it is not highly weathered.
4.7 gram cut end piece – 25mm x 16mm x 6mm - $30

NWA 925: (H3.8). Found June 2001. Tkw = 897 grams.
This is distinctly different than the sample above. This is a bit fresher, has a lighter color and a bit of porous texture to it.
4.5 gram slice – 24mm x 20mm x 2mm - $30

PLAINVIEW (a), Texas: (H5) breccia. Found 1917. Tkw = 700+ kilograms.
A 25 pound piece of this meteorite fell into a horse corral in early spring 1903, so this meteorite should probably be called a fall rather than a find (I have had slices of the horse corral specimen and they do indeed match other Plainview slices). This is a nice part slice that has ½ of its edge crusted and the remainder divided between a natural break and a sawn edge.
15.6 gram part slice – 36mm x 26mm x 5mm - $55 

ALLENDE, Mexico: carbonaceous chindrite (CV3.2). Fell February 8, 1969.
This is a nice slice that has one edge of crust (remaining edges are breaks or very late stage crust). I am nearly out of this stuff in my inventory so I was glad to get a piece or two in this consignment lot.
4.4 gram slice – 25mm x 23mm x 3mm - $35 

NWA 2663: Carbonaceous chondrite. (CO3.1). Found 2004. Tkw = 580grams.
This is a nice macro specimen in a plastic display box, showing lots of tiny chondrules in a medium to dark brown matrix.
2.0 gram slice – 15mm x 13mm x 3mm - $30

ZAGAMI, Nigeria: Martian (Shergottite). Fell October 3, 1962. Tkw = 18.1 kilograms.
This is a small fragment with a roughly 5mm x 4mm cut face. This does not have any fusion crust that I can see, but it does have a good number of thin black shock lines running through it.
.178 gram fragment with cut face – 6mm x 5mm x 4mm - $160

ESQUEL, Argentina: (Pallasite). Found 1951.
This is a particularly aesthetic little piece. It has a nice arrangement of large gemmy crystals, a couple of which nicely transmit light (and the remainder are interesting in that they act like windows to looking down inside the slice). The edge is nearly ½ natural as well! The only problem I can see (and this is only for some people) is that it is a wedged sample and not uniform thickness (but this is what allows for the diversity of crystal appearances though).
8.1 gram slice – 31mm x 20mm x 4mm - $250

IMILAC, Chile: (Pallasite). Found 1822.
This is a really nice "weathered" fragment – the ones that have the wild shape and sandy olivine crystals that range from yellow to pink in color. I personally feel that these are more likely impact shrapnel fragments, as the bulk of them were found surrounding an impact crater. Regardless, this is a particularly nice example.
13.1 gram fragment – 25mm x 16mm x 12mm - $95

SEYMCHAN, Russia: (pallasite). Found 1967. 
This is a nice rectangular slice with fairly dark but yet gemmy olivines. I sold this piece to the owner a few years ago and have not been able to come up with as nice of material for replacement (I am nearly out of truly pallasitic pieces of this meteorite).
5.9 gram slice – 26mm x 17mm x 3mm - $90 

THIN - SECTIONS:
Unfortunately, I have only these two specimens. The dimensions are the area of actual meteorite material on the slide.

Allende, Mexico: (CV3.2) – 23mm x 18mm - $50

Waltman, Wyoming: (L4) – 22mm x 16mm - $50

Thursday 2 June 2011

Blaine Reed Meteorites List #104

Blaine Reed Meteorites List #104

Blaine Reed
P.O. Box 1141
Delta, CO 81416
Ph/fax (970) 874-1487
………………………………………………………LIST 104

May 31, 2011

Dear Collectors,

This is a mixed list of some things I have bought and others that are consignments. This should be going out next week (first Tuesday of the month), But I would be leaving for a trip the next morning if I waited. I wanted to give at least some chance for all of you to look this over before I head out the door for a week (I will likely be gone the 8th until about the 14th – a bit different than what I posted on my last list, but I had the wrong dates for the watch and clock convention when typed that up). Also though, I will be going on a short overnight trip this Friday through Saturday (unexpected, but "required"), so do try to reach me before Friday if you want anything listed here.

CADDO COUNTY, Oklahoma: ungrouped silicatated iron. Found 1987. Tkw = 18kg.
This is the stuff that many people thought might be a Lodranite when it was first brought out. This piece is mostly metal, with a nice fine etch structure, but does have silicates along 2 sides. 
8.58 gram slice – 31mm x 19mm x 2mm - $130 SOLD!

CANYON DIABLO, Arizona: Coarse octahdrite (IAB).
This is a nice semi-large wire – brushed individual. It as some large deep pockets in it (one is nearly spherical and about 35mm diameter) to give this paper-weight an interesting shape. Not quite an art piece, but quite nice!
1700 gram brushed individual – 100mm x 65mm x 65mm - $850

ODESSA, Texas: Coarse octahedrite (IAB). 
I have not gotten any new pieces of Odessa in a long time (the last batch I thought I was getting turned out to be Deports – the ones on my last offering). These are definitely Odessa and came from two different sources! Both are nice solid pieces with nice surface sculpting (better than the typical Odessa). The large "end piece" (actually closer to an individual with one 75mm x 25mm flat side polished and etched) has a couple particularly deep pockets on it. Both of these are natural, NOT brushed. Very nice pieces, and quite hard to come by these days.
a) 256.6 gram natural individual – 60mm x 50mm x 20mm - $190
b) 1291 gram "end piece" – 120mm x 60mm x 40mm - $900

BENSOUR, Morocco: (LL6). Fell February 10, 2002. Tkw = 45+ kg.
This is a really fresh and nice specimen. It is a "broken individual" but is more than 60% covered in really fresh crust. This also has a small added feature of interest – a scuff mark on part of the crust from this stone hitting something on the ground when it fell.
24.5 gram individual (60% crusted) – 35mm x 25mm x 15mm - $150

BROWNFIELD (1937), Texas: (H 3.8). Found 1937. Tkw = 44kg.
This is a slice that came from me many years ago, and still has the old, mostly still legible label I sent with it that long time ago. This was cut from a 6kg individual I bought from the farmer that ploughed it up in 1994. I thought WOW! 6kg of an H3! This will last a looong time. I sold out of this stuff surprisingly rapidly, and at the same price, I believe, that I sold it for back in 1994.
31.3 gram slice – 50mm x 33mm x 6mm - $235

GHUBARA, Oman: (L5), black, xenolithic. Found 1954. Tkw = 250+ kg.
This is rather interesting stuff. It is fragments of L5 material in an L3 host. This might be best considered an L3 with L5 xenoliths.
18.3 gram slice – 45mm x 43mm x 3mm - $25 

GOLD BASIN, Arizona: (L4). Found 1995. Tkw = 170+ kg.
This is an unpolished slice (actually the back is a lightly ground natural flat surface – the finder probably did this to make sure they had indeed located a meteorite). It has lots of metal and a pleasing mixed almost bluish gray and medium brown matrix (this stuff has always reminded me of Dalgetty Downs).
16.9 gram slice – 31mm x 30mm x 6mm - $20 

NWA (1697): (L5), breccia. Ound 2002. Tkw = 3 kg.
This is really very fresh material. It shows a number of angular fragments (mostly lighter, but there are a couple dark fragments) in a light gray matrix. There is some light brown spotting, but not much.
27.3 grams slice – 40mm x 35mm x 8mm - $30 

PLAINVIEW (1917), Texas: (H5), breccia. Found 191, may have fallen Spring 1903. 
A fireball was seen in the area shortly after dusk in early spring 1903. A 25 pound stone was recovered from a horse corral the next day. This piece was eventually cut and matched perfectly internally and externally with the many Plainview stones discovered in 1917some 10 miles away. This meteorite is a regolith breccia and pieces have been found that contain fragments of many different kinds of meteorites that impacted the H chondrite parent body.
29.8 gram part slice 53mm x 25mm x 7mm - $110

DAR AL GANI (067), Libya: carbonaceous (C03). Found 1995. Tkw = 688 grams.
This is one piece of many that were recovered from a strewn field (I think each stone ended up getting its own number – at least that is how it seemed at the time) so there is obviously a lot more of this stuff than 688grams. Pieces of this were quite common and affordable 15 years ago. They are fairly scarce now. This slice is highly polished on one side, but the chondrules show much clearer on the unpolished side.
4.3 gram complete slice – 23mm x 20mm x 3mm - $50 

NWA (2943), (R3-6). Found 2005. Tkw = 300 grams.
This is a part slice (this has one cut edge) that shows a lot of light colored chondrules in a a medium to dark brown matrix. 
3.7 gram part slice – 20mm x 20mm x 3mm - $50

AGOULT, Morocco: Unbrecciated eucrite. Found 2000. Tkw = 9+ kg.
This is definitely unusual stuff (despite the reported 9+kg known, I have only seen and have handled small pieces such as this). Ut has a drastically different look to other eucrites (I have not heard if this is also from the same parent body as Ibitira – which this closely resembles). This has a fine-grained sugary texture that more closely resembles sand stone rather than a basaltic meteorite. 
3.2 gram fragment – 17mm x 12mm x 9mm - $290