Blaine Reed Meteorites List 107 - last of the Florida collection, etc.

Blaine Reed Meteorites List 107 - last of the Florida collection, etc.


Blaine Reed
P.O. Box 1141
Delta, CO 81416
Ph/fax (970) 874-1487
………………………………………………………LIST 107

August 16, 2011

Dear Collectors,

I am back from the Creede show (plus a short trip to the Buena Vista show this past Saturday) and have a lot to catch up on now, so this is going out a bit late. I should be home (aside from a dentist appointment tomorrow and general running into town for the usual stuff) for the next week or so. Not sure I will be able to handle being home for so long. It will be a change. I got new tires on my car a couple weeks ago and already have a couple thousand miles on them!

Any way, this will likely be my last list of the summer (and, finally, the last of the Florida collection material). My next one (time and material permitting) will likely be early September. I will at least make a posting concerning the Denver show around then regardless.

CANYON DIABLO: Arizona. Coarse octahedrite (IAB).
Like the Sikhote below, this is, finally, my last Diablo specimen from the Florida collection. It is a nice piece for its size and has held up very well considering the environment it was in for many years. This shows only minor surface spotting in areas, no scaling.
140.1 gram brushed individual – 40mm x 40mm x 28mm - $75

ETCHED IRON SLICE: Likely Canyon Diablo.
This came in with the collection from Florida some time ago. It was not labeled so I simply set it aside. Now it is time to let it find a home. This is a complete slice that is etched on one side (the back is sanded but not highly polished). I guessed that this is Canyon Diablo mostly based on; a) It has not rusted apart like a Campo likely would in Florida (it shows some minor brown staining but that is all). b) it does not have a lot of inclusions that Odessas usually show and c) it is too coarse a structure for a Toluca. This would be a fine piece for showing people an etched coarse octahedrite, even if we don't have a positive ID on its origin.
84.2 gram complete slice, etched one side – 70mm x 40mm x 5mm - $45

GIBEON, Namibia: Fine octahedrite (IVA).
This is a nice slice that attests to the stability of most of this material. This has been in Florida for MANY years (looks like a fairly early Haag specimen) and shows only a couple thin "rust" lines. This is a part slice that has on nice long edge of natural exterior (about 60mm long). A good and stable piece.
79.6 gram etched part slice – 50mm x 50mm x 5mm - $110

SIKHOTE-ALIN: (Russia). Coarsest octahedrite. Fell February 12, 1947.
I think that this, finally, is my last piece of this meteorite from the Florida collection. However, this is not the least. This is a shrapnel piece with a particularly nice shape. You can easily see where two layers were coming apart but just managed to stop where they are barely attached – forming a bit of a long natural hole between them. Really nice little piece!
9.9 gram shrapnel fragment – 30mm x 17mm x 12mm - $6

DIMMITT, Texas: (H3.7). Found 1942.
This is a really nice individual of this interesting meteorite. Dimmitt is a regolith breccia that contains fragments of many different kinds of meteorites (LL, carbonaceous, etc.) that impacted the H parent body. This is a particularly nice stone (better than I have had or seen in years). It is an obviously complete stone (no `late breaks" on this one) with nice rounded edges, soft thumb-printing and nice orange brown to chocolate brown crust. This is also a Monig specimen. This has a catalog number (M138.167) put on it by Glenn Huss when he cataloged the collection in the `80s. It also has a black square painted on it where the original Monig number was painted on it, but now mostly missing for some reason. I suspect that it may be that this was originally labeled as a Tulia (these two meteorites have been mixed up, stirred together and confused for decades) and Glenn scrubbed off the original number so as not to confuse this obvious nice Dimmitt with a Tulia. 
714.1 gram complete individual – 100mm x 70mm x 55mm - $900

NWA (2179): (H3). Found 2003. Tkw = 367.2 grams.
This is a nice small slice that does not show much fresh metal, but does a real good job of showing chondrules of many sizes and colors.
1.54 gram slice – 25mm x 13mm x 2mm - $30

TAMDAKHT, Morocco: (H5). Fell December 20, 2008.
This is the stuff that generally is found in fragments, as most of the stones got shattered by hitting rocks on the ground where they fell high in the Atlas Mountains. This "door stop" is no exception. This has a number of crust patches (and a large amount of slickenside surfaces that hint that much of the "late breakage" of this may be atmospheric). One patch has a lot of obvious scraping and adhering dirt and is likely the point of impact for this stone. It is the largest crust patch (roughly 90mm x 90mm) that tells the most interesting story though. This crust patch is very thick (1.5mm to 2mm in some areas) and does show a good amount of bubbles. This is likely the crust that was on the back-side of a large oriented stone, where melted material that flowed off of the front pools up and often gets bubbly in the low-pressure area of the back side of the falling oriented stone (the scuffed up crust on the opposite end supports this view. It is thumb-printed and seems to show flow-lines running the correct direction, though the scuffing hides them a bit). What is even more special is that there is an obvious "mini-meteorite" (about 10mm x 8mm) that has gotten stuck in the thick crust (this is NOT a piece of iron in the large stone that simply did not erode away). This is likely a small stone that was falling with (in front of actually) this chunk that got caught up in the low-pressure zone of this large oriented stone that was overtaking it during the fall and got welded to its back side to preserve the story for us. This, admittedly, is not a real pretty specimen overall but it tells a really neat story and is priced really cheap for a fall.
4284 gram crusted fragment with mini-meteorite – 180mm x 120mm x 90mm - $4000

UNKNOWN STONE: Most likely L4 or LL4.
Here are a few .5cm to 1cm sized fragments of an unlabeled meteorite (along with powder and a good number of loose chondrules) in a plastic vial. I suspect that this is Bjurbole, but have no way to prove it, unfortunately.
Fragments, dust and chondrules in a vial - $2

DHOFAR (026), Oman: (Lunar. Anorthositic melt), Found 2000. Tkw = 148 grams.
This is probably one of the more ugly Lunars known. It is a pretty uniform gray/ green color and almost completely lacking any kind of features, other than a few tiny bright white (likely anorthosite) inclusions. I would never recognize this as a meteorite, let alone a Lunar (however, the XRF sees that it is). This may not be pretty, but it has gotten quite scarce. 
.39 gram slice – 12mm x 10mm x 1mm - $700

TATAHOUINE, Tunisia: (Diogenite). Fell June 27, 1931. Tkw = 13.5kg.
At first glance this looks like one of the usual small fragments but this is much more interesting. This piece actualy has fusion crust! One side has an obvious smooth, thumb-printed look to it (the other faces are the usual sharp, angular surfaces of these pieces). Looking at it with a hand-lens, it becomes readily apparent that there are some patches of shiny black crust on this smoothed surface. So, finally, I have a fragment of this meteorite available that shows a fusion surface!
2.2 gram fragment with fusion crust – 17mm x 13mm x 5mm - $40 

HUCKITTA, Australia: (Pallasite).
This is one of the usual oxide pieces and one that is a bit harder to see the olivine in than some. 
29.3 gram end piece – 40mm x 35mm x 13mm - $38 

IMILAC, Chile: (Pallasite). Found 1822.
This is a shrapnel (impact?) fragment that has had much of one side ground down and highly polished to show the interior. This has a nice interesting shape and the crystals inside are somewhat gemmy (NOT the usual sand-like crystals typically found in these type pieces). A nice little display specimen.
9.8 gram fragment with polished face – 25mm x 18mm x 10mm - $75

MOLDAVITE: Tektite.
This is a nice long (tongue-shaped) individual. It has nice surface features (not a water rounded lump) and no chipping.
12.0 gram complete individual – 40mm x 22mm x 5mm - $70

FULGURITE: Lightning fused sand from the Sahara Desert.
This is a bag containing about 10 small fragments and pieces (around 1cm to 2cm sized, 3g worth) - $2

ROCK OF GIBRALTOR:
This keeps making me think of the old insurance commercial "Get a piece of the rock" where they would show an outline of this famous rock. This was in the Florida collection material. Not a meteorite but probably interesting to some one out there.
138 gram fragment (looks to be limestone) – 60mm x 55mm x 40mm - $5

TRINITITE: Nuclear blast fused sand from the world's first nuclear explosion on July 16, 1945.
This is a nice large piece of this always popular material. This is quite a bit larger than anything I have left in my inventory.
4.1 gram fragment – 23mm x 17mm x 13mm - $20