Blaine Reed Meteorites -LIST 260 21MAR2023

Blaine Reed Meteorites
P.O. Box 1141, Delta, CO 81416
Phone: (970) 874-1487
brmeteorites@yahoo.com

LIST 260 - March 21, 2023


Dear Collectors

Here is yet another “After Tucson” list. I will probably need a couple more of these to clear out the things that came to me in Tucson (or were shipped to me right before).

A note that will not mean a lot to most of you: I have had a fax machine since close to when they first came available. It was really handy for those overseas, don’t speak the language orders (this was well before e-mail). I (and the other folks) found it easier to write things like a letter but have it on the other end as fast as a phone call. Others preferred to send credit card info this way. In fact, I have had this done as recently as my last mailed offering! However, I had someone try to send a fax to me a week or so ago and my fax seems to have completely come apart internally (some important old plastic gear or such obviously broke). I tried to receive the incoming fax but could not. The top of the machine just kept jumping up (trying to open the cover on its own) while making terrible snapping and popping sounds. I looked into it and, nope, this is something I can’t fix. So, at this point I have to let those few of you that liked contacting me this way, I cannot be reached that way right now. I will likely look into seeing if I can find an old thermal paper fax I can use (my tearing into this – a plain paper fax – showed me a HUGE security risk inside that I had not considered before), but that may take time. In the meantime, I will be completely destroying the carbon paper inside of this old one (burning it I suppose) and will NOT be able to receive fax messages until further notice, unfortunately.
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CANYON DIABLO, Arizona: Coarse octahedrite. Found 1891.
I have had a really hard time getting ANY Canyon Diablos lately. My main supplier told me in December of 2021 that he would NOT be selling me anymore of his. And, so far, he has lived up to his words. I have not gotten a single gram from him. This isn’t him trying to be mean or anything, it is just things have changed (for the better) for him. His main business is doing a lot of the small retail weekend shows all over the place. In 2020 and most of 2021 those were not happening. He had no place to sell his stuff (the bulk of which is various raw lapidary rocks/ dino bone, hand- made cabochons and jewelry (quite well done). For a couple years he simply NEEDED someone like me to buy in bulk to survive. Now that his large list of shows are back (I’ll be seeing him in Creede early August) he can sell all the Canyon Diablo he wants/ needs to at full retail now. Anyway, I was offered these end pieces from a “secondary” source. He had just got done cutting and etching what was a pretty ugly (rounded lump) of a Canyon Diablo the he had gotten some years earlier from the guy I used to get mine from. Well, this thing etched up beautifully! It has one of the best etches I have seen from Canyon Diablo (not sure if the photo will really show this though). Oddly, the fact that this was just a rounded, not pretty piece is part of the reason it did etch. You see, the Canyon Diablos that have retained their nice sculpted character (aside from usually being too pretty to cut up) have often gotten “heat treated” during the impact. They were “close to the fire” of the crater forming event. This hardened them so they are far more likely to retain a neat shape but also far, far more likely to NOT show much of an etch pattern, if any (and it was such a piece that I tried to use for a geochemistry glass talk once. After nearly blowing up the geology department’s saw (the guy overseeing its use could not/ would not believe me when I said it absolutely CANNOT be run using the saw’s powered screw feed) the end pieces then embarrassed me in front of the whole class when neither of them would etch (I did not have time to try it before the actual lecture day and would not have had time to try cutting open another piece, IF that would have been allowed, anyway). So, these two separate pieces are actually just halves of the same meteorite that was properly cut and etched. I have also priced these below what I have to ask for Canyon Diablo in general these days. Really nice paperweights!
a) 774.9gram etched end piece – 95mm x 65mm x 30mm - $900
b) 1114.9 gram etched end piece – 100mm x 80mm x 30mm - $1300
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JIKHARRA (001), Libya: HED achondrite (Eucrite, melt breccia). Found 2022. Tkw = 3 tons.
Yep, the total known weight is in the tons. Estimated at about 3 when this was reported but I have heard it might really be closer to 4 or even 5!! THAT is a LOT OF VESTA! However this huge discovery has now made it possible to own an achondrite (plus one that actually has a known body of origin!) for the price of most average common chondrites! I myself picked up a nice bowling ball sized piece of this for my collection. I have these two nice, clearly natural individuals and a couple ugly longish fragment pieces that I plan to run through the saw sometime before too long and offer slices of. Really crappy weather so far this entire year (I put a new solar hot air panel on my house the day before Christmas and we’ve had pretty much an endless string of clouds, wind, rain, snow since). So, no slices for a while, but I can offer these nice individuals (I’ll probably just buy more if these sell. I am a fan of Vesta stuff – particularly at these kinds of prices).
a) 792.3 gram individual – 90mm x 80mm x 50mm - $590
b) 2327.4 gram individual – 130mm x 110mm x 80mm - $1600
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NWA (11615): Ordinary chondrite (LL3). Found 2017. Tkw = 3114 grams.
A single stone was found and purchased in Temara, Morocco by a meteorite dealer in August of 2017. This is a nice meteorite, showing LOTS of closely packed, well-formed chondrules. This is quite fresh. There are very few blebs of fresh metal in this (and most of them are very small. This shows almost no attraction to a magnet. I suspect that someone might have thought that they had found an achondrite (the chondrules don’t really seem to show on the natural edge) when they found this one. Still, an unequlibrated (type 3) stone isn’t bad! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any info on approximate “subtype” (3.3, 3.6, 3.7….). There was a note of the chrome content of the olivines (apparently, it is possible to get a sub-type from that info) but I have no clue how to interpret that right now, unfortunately.
99.4 gram complete slice – 95mm x 85mm x 4mm - $300

NWA (14016): HED achondrite (Eucrite, melt breccia). Found 2020. Tkw = 29.4kg.
Nope, this IS a eucrite melt breccia like the Jikharra above but it is a completely different animal. I have seen cut pieces of the Jikharra and, to be honest, it is kind of a mushy mess inside (it is almost all melted). This does not have a whole lot of melt in it, just dark veins and zones between the angular still eucritic looking (for the most part) clasts. This has much more the look of a Lunar anorthositic breccia. In fact, some people that saw pieces of this I had in Tucson thought that it was. Nope, just a nice complete slice of a lunar looking eucrite and the second cheapest eucrite that I am aware of (the Jikharra above is number one in that respect).
259.8 gram complete slice – 180mm x 125mm x 5mm - $850
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PHILIPPINITE: Tektite from the Philippines.
This is, at the moment, my largest tektite of any sort (I know, I recently had a customer wanting to know what are the largest tektites I have. My next largest is a somewhat chipped 100g Chinese tektite spherical piece). I got this along with some nice NWA chondrite pieces as part of a “collection”. This is at least 3 times larger than any of my other Philippinites. This also has a lot better grooving to it. This does not have a lot of the classic big deep grooves all over it (those kinds are like $3/g now) but it has some. A nice, natural, unchipped grooved individual.
167.9 gram natural individual – 65mm x 45mm x 30mm - $165

SPRINGWATER, Canada: Stony-iron (Pallasite). Found 1931.
Well, actually this piece was found in the fall of 2008. This is one of the samples that turned up when a group of US meteorite hunters researched the area, put in a little (a lot?) effort and hit pay dirt. I don’t recall how much they ended up finding. It was a substantial amount. However, almost all of it stayed in Canada. You can’t just find a take home a Canadian meteorite. You have to get export papers for it and you can only get that once everyone in Canada (museums, research institutes, etc) has what they want of it first. In this case, there was some left over to be exported, but not a lot. I believe that this is the LAST piece the person I got this from (one of the partners in the re-discovery of the strewn filed has (the last he is willing to sell now anyway). This is a really nice, solid piece (that looks like it might even show some fusion crust remnants).
296.4 gram natural individual – 70mm x 45mm x 40mm - $5500

TIRHERT, Morocco: HED achondrite (Eucrite). Fell July 9, 2014. Tkw = about 8kg.
This isn’t cheap but it sure has the “Wow!” factor. This is clearly an early after the fall recovery piece. It has the best, shiny fusion crust I have seen on a eucrite in many, many years. I think the Early Camel Dongas might have given this a run for its money but those started looking pretty ratty in a matter of months after the strewn field was discovered (Camel Donga is not recorded as a fall but it must have fallen VERY soon before it was discovered as the pieces did weather quite quickly). This does have a number of small corner and edge chips, but, in a way, those make this more interesting as they show a wonderfully contrasting almost white unbrecciated eucrite interior.
121.9 gram beautifully crusted individual – 50mm x 35mm x 35mm - $9800

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Shipping: Shipping rates, right now, have gone up yet again. They seem to have added a "holiday time surcharge". Now it seems that the cheapest I can send a small padded envelope order for is close to $6 at the moment. Regardless, I'll keep the shipping on these (they are small and light weight) at a simple $5 for now for US shipping.

Small overseas orders are around $16 (Canada seems to be right around $15).

Blaine Reed Meteorites -LIST 259 07MAR2023

Blaine Reed Meteorites
P.O. Box 1141, Delta, CO 81416
Ph/fax (970) 874-1487
brmeteorites@yahoo.com

LIST 259 - March 7, 2023

Dear Collectors:
  Here is another “after Tucson” offering. Once again, this is a list of some of the things that came home with me from the show. Some (most) of these are consignments (many brought to me during the show) and some are things I had picked up earlier.


AGOUDAL, Morocco: Iron meteorite, Coarsest octahedrite (IIAB). Found 2000.
I remember when pieces of this stuff first started coming out. They were only quite small ones (a few grams up to, maybe, a few tens of grams). The stuff was being offered as a “new Hexahedrite” (and, yes, if you only have a small piece, you are basically looking at a single Kamacite crystal, which is basically what a Hexahedrite is) for around $5 to $6/g I think. I recognized right away that the things looked like they were from a crater type impact/ fall. Yep, that is indeed what things turned out to be. LOTS of these little pieces started pouring out. Prices got quite affordable on this material (I think, for some time, I was selling it at $.50 to $.60/g). Well, like everything else in our lives these days, prices are going up (part of this is, like other meteorite localities, the find area of this material has been pretty much complexly worked over) and my cost now starts at $1/g for small pieces (in larger volumes – like 5+kg). Of all the quantity of this meteorite that was found, VERY few were of larger size (like over a kilo or so) and only a couple were “really big” (in this case, really big means around soccer ball sized or so). I know of one of these larger pieces that was cut into slices. I had heard that some of these slices were going to be available in Tucson one year. I went to the person that had them but, as they were still unpacking for the show, they could not locate them at that moment. By the time I got word that they had been found and could make it over to buy some, they were already all gone. Here, I believe, are two slices from that batch that someone faster than me was able to acquire. These are nice complete slices. Though the price is somewhat higher than they would have been back then, it is NOT by much. So, if you want a nice complete slice of this meteorite that now has a known crater associated with it (that is of yet to be determined diameter but it looks to be around 105 thousand years old), act fast, these are all I (and my source) has of these.
a) 294.0 gram complete slice – 130mm x 80mm x 4mm - $600
b) 928.4 gram complete slice – 180mm x 130mm x 5mm - $1900



AUSTRALITES: Tektites from Australia.
These nice pieces are from a small jewelry box of cores, flanges and partial buttons I picked up at an earlier show. I have had them sitting around here for some time mulling over how I should go about “marketing” them. I decided to take some of the very best pieces (many of what I got will end up in my usual $7/g Australite tray at future shows). Here I have two membrane boxes of specimens. The smaller one has the crème de la crème of the batch in it – an almost 1/2 complete slightly tear-drop button with a really large/ clear flange around ½ of it. With it is a partial core that has a nice (but thinner) flange around part of it. In between these two is a nice core that shows some nice pressure waves on the front and three partial flanges place almost perfectly at the points of a triangle. The other batch hs 10 specimens in it. This has a nice assortment of cores with nice partial flanges in the top row, smaller cores that have partial flanges or really strong pressure waves in the center row (4 pieces) and 3 nice flange fragments (as naturally found) in the bottom row. I can’t even remember how long ago it was when I last had specimens like these. I finally managed to locate the location info I had written down on these. That says these are from Charlotte Waters (I assume that is a locality and not just a person’s name), Northern Territory, Australia.
a) 3 specimens in membrane box including ½ teardrop flanged button - $600
b) 10 specimens (flanges/ cores, flanged cores) in membrane box - $500



CANYON DIABLO, Arizona: Coarse octahedrite (IAB). Found 1891.
This is a neat complete slice that Marlin (of Montana Meteorite Lab, excellent meteorite cutting and prepping fame) did as kind of labor of love test. He decided to see just how high a polish he could get on a piece of this material. I don’t remember just how long he said it took him (something like 20 plus hours of actual direct labor seems familiar), just that this would be “unaffordable” if he tried to get his labor value back out of this piece. As expected, this has a pretty much high mirror look to it. One important note: this has NOT been coated. This allows its natural mirror-like quality to really shine, BUT I’d suggest letting me give it a quick spray if you live in a humid environment. I use Deft, which can easily be removed if you decide you don’t want the coating later. A neat slice, with a neat shape and a really nice troilite inclusion at one end.
360.7g mirror polished compete slice – 1700 x 45mm x 6mm - $650

GHADAMIS, Libya: Ordinary chondrite (L6). Fell August 26, 2018.
I know, this is NOT an official name. I think this stuff is (officially) being called “HaH 346”. THAT is listed as “Fall? – No but possible”. The fireball was widely seen in the area and people went out to the likely fall area and started finding beautiful fresh stone meteorites right in the expected area. However, because someone wasn’t actually directly IN the fall area (and saw stones hit the ground or have on pass through a roof/ vehicle or such) it must now be reported as a “possible” fall (this is because of some serious “monkey business” of some people in the past using bright fireballs as a way to sell nice fresh pieces of already known meteorites as “completely new” meteorite fall specimens for some seriously exorbitant prices. Some of these folks got caught at the that game, so now it is MUCH harder to get something reported fully as a fall). I can also tell that these are from a witnessed fall as some of the pieces I have seen recently are already showing signs of rusting. The two pieces I have here are ones that were recovered fairly early after the fall. The crust on both is quite fresh but the smaller of the two does have adhering dust/ dirt that makes the crust look a bit lighter colored in places and the larger piece has a couple tiny areas on one end that show some minor (very minor) orange coloration. Regardless, these piece are far nicer/ fresher than some of the pieces of this meteorite I have been offered lately. Also, these are priced at the same price that was being asked (wholesale!) on those weathered pieces.
a) 236.2 gram complete individual – 80mm x 50mm x 40mm - $295
b) 316.0 gram complete individual – 70mm x 55mm x 50mm - $395



MURCHISON, Australia: Carbonaceous chondrite (CM2). Fell September 28, 1969.
Here is a piece that I could have sold in Tucson if I had it labeled right. This was dropped off with me while I was still moving into/ setting up my room for the show. It came with a “Dave Mouat Collection” card that said it was 11.1 grams “with partial fusion crust”. Yep, this does have a nice long edge of obvious fusion crust (along about 1/3 of its exterior edge). I failed to notice that this card said “fragment”. Well, this IS certainly Murchison but it is a really nice thin slice and, even better, it is actually a COMPLETE slice. The other 2/3 of its edge, on more careful inspection shows are also fusion crusted, all be it with thinner/ secondary crust. The reason I said this would have sold if I had it labeled right at the show is that very few people were looking to spend $7000on a piece of Murchison (which is what this was priced at at the start). However, I had a couple people interested in a piece about one third to one half that size. Well, it was sitting right there, I just didn’t know it until I took the thing out of its holder and decided to actually weigh it. Oh well, now someone out there seeing this list will have a shot at a really nice complete slice of Murchison.
3.86 gram complete slice – 38mm x 30mm x 1mm - $2450.

NWA (6370): Stony-Iron (Mesosiderite). Found 2010. Tkw = 386 grams.
Here are some nice complete slices of a beautiful mesosiderite that I have actually had (but didn’t know it) for quite a long time. These were in a sandwich bag tucked under other things that I did know about and had been offering for quite some time. It was “digging deeper” for more of some of that material that brought these to the surface. Part of the reason that these remained hidden is that I had so little of the material to begin with. But then, how much could I have if the starting mass was under 400 grams (subtract off the research piece(s), a nice piece or two the original owner likely kept, maybe a couple more he may have sold and there is Not much remaining (plus I sold a couple of these in Tucson). Overall, mesosiderites are quite under appreciated. In the collecting world, they are far, far rarer (in number of different and weights available) then the (admittedly) much prettier pallasites. Also, many of the mesosiderites (I am looking at you Vaca) are often quite weathered. These pieces are really nice, fresh, complete slices. They are absolutely loaded with metal and have the occasional large silicate inclusion – classic mesosiderite look to them. About the only “negative (?) on these is that they have not been polished (could do this but fear that may “pluck” out a fair number of the larger silicate inclusions). However, as these were obviously cut with a wire-saw, you have to look really carefully to notice this “problem”.
a) 16.6 gram complete slice – 60mm x 40mm x 2mm - $350
b) 23.1 gram complete slice – 55mm x 46mm x 2mm - $470

NWA (10023). Stony-iron. Pallasite (Main group, anomalous). Found 2014. Tkw 6.95kg.
Apparently, one mass was found near the Moroccan/ Algerian border. Research work on this showed that it seems to be related to the main group pallasites but that the metal in this particular pallasite is unusually high in plessite (this is a fine-grained, high nickel content mix of Kanacite and taenite (the first being the usual low in nickel Fe/Ni alloy – making up hexahedrites in their entirety and Taeninte being the high nickel alloy in iron meteorites – making up the enrirety of nickel-rich ataxites). For those of you that have been collectiong awhile, the most obvious example of an entire meteorite basically being plessite is the famous NWA 859 meteorite – better known as Taza. This is a nice complete slice of this unusual pallasite (obviously cut from near one of the ends – either that or another piece of this was found since the Met Bull publication of it). This does show some transmittance of light through a couple of the crystals, but it is low (and dark) enough that I have not bothered to try to take photos showing this (plus we seem to be stuck under endless gray skies. I installed a new solar hot-air panel on my house the day before Christmass and I swear we have not had more than a few (single digit number while I have been home) since!).
6.86 gram complete slice – 35mm x 25mm x 1mm - $675


Shipping: Shipping rates, right now, have gone up yet again. They seem to have added a "holiday time surcharge". Now it seems that the cheapest I can send a small padded envelope order for is close to $6 at the moment. Regardless, I'll keep the shipping on these (they are small and light weight) at a simple $5 for now for US shipping.

Small overseas orders are around $16 (Canada seems to be right around $15).

I do have a fax machine that seems to work (but I have to answer it and manually turn it on), so overseas people can contact me that way if they must. However, for overseas orders, it probably is best to go ahead and use my brmeteorites@yahoo.com e-mail when possible.