P.O. Box 1141
Delta, CO 81416
Ph/fax (970) 874-1487
June 7 , 2021
LIST 243
Dear Collectors:
It has been a looong time since I sent out an offering by mail or e-mail. I decided to skip my usual spring mailed list this year. Part of this was because I delayed my beginning of the year list until February. I thought it might be a bit much to send out one offering and then yet another a mere month and a half later. Also, I have been surprisingly busy with many things since Tucson so I really have not had a lot of time to prep up a bunch of things for a new mailed offering. It would have been easily into mid to late May before I could have gotten something pulled together. However at that point I was out of town house sitting for a friend and attending the rescheduled Denver Spring show. I also had planned on being on a week long trip with friends at the end of the month but that get set aside more or less at the last minute (for Linda and I anyway). So, it would been probably middle of June before I actually would have been able to get something in collector’s hands. Nope. I made that mistake once years ago. Once mid May or so comes along, collectors are thinking much more along the lines of using $ for “family vacation” (though that got screwed up last year for sure) NOT “adding to the collection”. So, an after Denver fall list will be my next mailed (and e-mailed) bigger offering. I will try to pull together a few small offerings over the summer but, to be honest, I have had some difficulty in picking up new miscellaneous things for those lately. With most folks staying home, I have had VERY few things come to me at the few shows I have had over the past year (very few collectors have come to any of them – mostly larger wholesale buyers only at these shows). I did pick up a few (larger) interesting things to offer here. Some of this I got in Tucson in April and some I got a couple weeks ago in Denver. One of these things (Tamarugal, Chile) is something that I don’t believe I have ever seen a piece of before (and thought about keeping it as such). The other things are all material I have had before but particularly nice (or “affordable” as I have been told not to say “cheap”) examples of those. These items were large enough that I had to break the usual list group photo into two photos this time.
TAMARUGAL, Chile: Iron. (IIIAB) medium octahedrite. Found 1903, Tkw = 320 kilograms.
A single mass of this meteorite was recovered. It has since been cut up with the bulk of the pieces residing in museum or research collections. As mentioned above, I don’t recall ever seeing a piece of this meteorite before. I showed it to a collector (actually two) that specialize in iron meteorites shortly after I got it in Tucson and their opinion was that this should sell for $50/ gram or more (they already had a slightly larger piece or they would have taken this one). They commented on how rarely a piece of this meteorite is available. This is a rectangular etched piece that could certainly use re-etching. I thought about trying that but then, realizing that I frankly suck at etching, I decided to leave it as it is.
22.6 gram etched part slice – 2mm x 20mm x 6mm – $950
LA LANDE, New Mexico: Ordinary chondrite (L5), S4. Found 1933, Tkw = about 30 kilograms.
This is a complete slice (that shows an old repair if you look closely) that I picked up in Tucson along with the Tamarugal. It has been a long time since I have had a slice of this meteorite and I am pretty certain that this is the first complete (all be it repaired) slice I have ever had of it. When this meteorite was first found, it was believed (and reported) to be another piece of the already known Melrose (a) meteorite that was found 26 east of this material (that would have made for a really large Melrose strewn field). Later work showed that this material was a separate meteorite from Melrose and that the 4 stones that were recovered represented TWO new meteorites! One was the La Lande and the other is Taiban. This slice looks to be an old Nininger specimen, at least it is the typical thick cut that Nininger often used. I can’t see any evidence that this slice ever had a Nininger number on it. It might not have. But then it may have and been later removed. I know it sounds absolutely horrific now, but back when I first started selling meteorites (about 35 years ago), many people asked me to remove these numbers (mostly Huss numbers at that point) or tell them how to do it as they didn’t want those distractions on their specimens! (then there was the guy that dumped a whole bucket full of thumb-sized Nininger labeled Canyon Diablos in a rock tumbler because he wanted to catch in of the tumbled Odessa craze that Robert Haag was making a killing on. Really, really dumb. We did our best to talk him out of it but he did it anyway and then learned that he couldn’t get the $1/g the Odessas were bringing because his pieces were much, much larger (closer to 80 or 100g each) and now they no longer had the Nininger provenance.
156.7 gram complete slice – 130mm x 48mm x 8mm - $450
NWA (12269): Martian, shergottite. Found 2018. Tkw = 2+ kilograms.
I picked up a really nice complete slice of this along with some other pieces to break down for sales of smaller specimens (I completely sold out of this material in Tucson in April). I decided to see if anyone out there might be interested in a larger complete slice (I had a good number of 3g to 4g complete slices earlier) at a price well below anything I normally charge for this stuff. I usually sell this for around $150/g - $200g depending upon size and style and sold all I had at the show for a price not much below that. This is a really nice, solid 28g plus slice that comes in a membrane box (which is not in the picture as it is fairly large). This is thin enough to get a great surface area for the weight but thick (and solid) enough to handle freely (but don’t drop it on a cement floor).
28.86 gram complete slice – 85mm x 50mm x 2mm - $2500
TOUAT (005), Algeria. Lunar, feldspathic breccia. Found 2020. Tkw = 3.71 kilograms.
This is a slice I picked up in Tucson and had planned on breaking it apart into smaller specimens (and that may yet happen). Even though this does show signs of a repair if you look closely (about 1/3 of the slice looks like it did or tried to break off at one point) I thought that this looked interesting enough to offer intact first. This has the classic lunar breccia texture similar to the popular NWA (11273) though it is a bit “muddy” in comparison. However, this has a number of interesting clasts that have the look of eucrites and howardites (no, this really is a lunar slice – I ran the XRF on it). I remember thinking that NWA (5000) wasn’t really Lunar when I first saw it as it has many of the same type clasts (and NWA (5000) is clearly fully Lunar, unlike the various self pairings Mr. Curry tried to make to that meteorite with various volcanic rhyolite breccia fragments and cobbles he found in the Montrose area years ago. Now it seems that he is peddling hunks/ chunks/ iron stained river cobbles of quartz as Lunar meteorites on Etsy these days. He even seems to be offering common tree branch sticks as “lunar magic wands” for hundreds of dollars claiming that the bark (which is falling off as the sticks dry out) is really “lunar fusion crust from a lunar meteorite that fell near this special tree” (no way to describe THAT as anything but make believe crazy). This, like the NWA (12269) above comes in a membrane box (the same size and shape too) that is not in the photo. If someone had the desire and the $, these two together would make a really nice matched Lunar/ Martian display set and I’d drop the price a little more on the set..
22.2 gram complete slice – 90mm x 58mm x 2mm - $1500
NWA (1932), Stony-iron. (Mesosiderite). Found 2005. Tkw = 15+ kilograms.
I remember back when I had a lot of this stuff and was selling it (quickly) quite cheap ($4/g range I think). Kind of wish I hung onto some of this. It was and is one of the best mesosiderites I have ever had. It has a really nice mix of metal and silicates and, occasionally, has neat round metal rich inclusions (this piece has a small example of that). This material is also very stable. I don’t recall ever having a piece of this rust, even if it was not coated. I rarely see a piece of this meteorite anymore and Mesosiderites tend to be fairly expensive these days when they do come along. That is not to surprising as Mesosiderites seem to be far rarer (at least in the collecting world) then Pallasites. This piece is in a riker display box.
41.7 gram end piece – 38mm x 28mm x 18mm - $300
SERICHO, Kenya: Stony-iron (Pallasite). Found 2016. Tkw = Lots.
I completely sold out of all of this meteorite I took to Tucson back in April. I sold out all of the smaller pieces that I had in my entire inventory as part of that. So, I had to go on a shopping hunt to find replacement material (well, a couple friends did the hunting part for me). I ended up getting a bit more than I really needed (certainly for that late in the show) but had no choice to get the price where I could use it. I can certainly just set this aside for the Denver fall show in September but decided to see if any collectors might like a nice smaller complete slice of this meteorite (pretty much all my smaller pieces from earlier were square and rectangular pieces) at a price that I usually get when wholesaling it at shows. These piece are very pretty to look at but they don’t pass light through the crystals (Sericho is really hard to get pieces that do that much, even when cut really thin). These have also been specially prepared. They were put through a stabilization process so, aside from doing something stupid like putting it on a shelf in your shower (yes, I actually had someone do that years ago with a Brenham slice and then demand a refund when the thing (obviously) fell apart) I fully believe that we’ll be enjoying these pieces years from now. I had some similarly prepared material from this same person for over 4 years and never had a problem with any of it.
Complete slices:
a) 19.0 grams – 55mm x 40mm x 2.5mm - $80
b) 30.2 grams – 60mm x 50mm x 3mm - $120
c) 51.1 grams – 90mm x 50mm x 3mm - $200
MOLDAVITE:
Yep, I have a few (very few) pieces of this right now. I (easily) sold all I had in Tucson at $20/g (I used to ask $6/g and take as low as $4/g on volume) before I even got my room open. That more than paid what would be the motel bill for the show and I was proud/ happy for that. I was soon told that I had made a big mistake. It seems that everyone else was asking $35 to $50/g for Moldavite in Tucson (and very few people had any). There is a real shortage of Moldavite right now. It seems that many (most?) of the mines have been shut down (so much so that one person told me that as little as a couple kilos or so of “new” moldavites are likely to be dug up and sold this year!). This along with some kind of hype on Tic-Tok (whatever the heck that is) has everyone scrambling for what little moldavite is yet to be had. I ran into one of the miners that has closed operations at the Denver spring show a couple weeks ago. He didn’t have much left (less than 800g to start with I think) but they were really nice (but generally big) pieces. I worked with a friend (who has a mineral shop he needs to keep supplied) and we made a deal to buy whatever was left at the end of the show (it was not much). I got 9 really nice pieces of which I only have 4 left. I am offering the two neatest pieces here. These are certainly NOT cheap by old standards but likely quite a deal compared to what you will find on similar pieces elsewhere. The “smaller” (lighter weight) piece has a really neat thin shape with a sharp bend on one end shape. The heavier piece has a nice more typical shape and is completely covered in fine sculpting (I think this is close to the largest moldavite I have ever had). These each come in a membrane type display box that is not in the picture.
a) 13.7 grams – 50mm x 40mm x 5mm - $450
b) 24.4 grams – 50mm x 25mm x 14mm - $700
