P.O. Box 1141, Delta, CO 81416
Phone: (970) 874-1487
brmeteorites@yahoo.com
LIST 271 - April 21, 2024
Dear Collectors,
Once again, I had kind of thought about skipping this “Spring offering” this year. I have had a LOT of travel and yet quite a bit more to go. Also, I have been busy with all kinds of general things, enough so that I am quite behind on my cutting and polishing work. However, something quite big has come up that pretty much determined that I need to send out an offering to give me a chance to let as many people as I can, know about some “news” concerning the Denver fall show this year.
That “news” is that this year’s Denver Fall show will NOT be as things have been. It seems that the city of Aurora is buying the Crowne Plaza hotel and convention center and turning it into a “Homeless shelter”. We had contracts to have our show there supposedly through the September 2026 show. Unfortunately, when a city is involved, the city can simply tear-up any and all contracts and simply toss them in the trash (Denver did this to the Clarion folks a mere month before they were to have their September show last year – the reason those folks ended up in our parking lot. Lots of neat new things to look at/ buy but did crimp parking for us quite a bit).
I have gotten a little more information on this while I visited the Denver Spring show a couple days ago. That show WILL be the last mineral show to happen at the Crowne Plaza. The new venue appears to be at a Marriott way down south in the Denver Tec Center. Nicer area, but certainly NOT convenient for reaching the other shows. The address of this new show venue is: 4900 S. Syracuse St, Denver, CO.
As I alluded to in the mailed version of this list (which was produced, stuffed and mailed before I had this new information) the show will be shorter than it has in the past. Basically, because this new venue has already been rented for what would be the last weekend of our originally scheduled show we will arrive early and close up early. Our new scheduled open days will be Sept. 5th-9th.
I have been able to get a little info on where I’ll be in this new setup. It seems that I should end up with a smallish (but bigger than what I had at Crowne Plaza) meeting room that is pretty much right in the middle of the “main” ballrooms/ show floor area. I suspect that, as such, I likely WILL NOT be able to stay open much after official closing time here (as there will be many, many tables and displays set up on the open floor areas surrounding this meeting room. Pretty sure “security” issues are not going to let me have people hanging around my room while all those displays around me are unattended and protected only by table covers). We shall see.
Regardless of all the stresses and difficulties that this change will bring about for all of us, this particular situation will be ONLY for this year. It seems that while our show promoter was negotiating, preparing to sign contracts for multiple years for this new place, someone else came in and “offered more money” for the venue for the times we needed for all future years past this year. SO, we will be playing this “find a new, functional venue” game again next year (for the spring show, that venue will now be the Western show complex (think the fall “Coliseum” show here).
SEYMCHAN, Russia. Stony-iron (Pallasite). Found 1967.
Well, these are actually all etched iron portion of this meteorite. I got these in Tucson. I got them from someone who had just gotten them in a trade. They didn’t really fit my usual “specimen” style but they were bright and pretty (and sold well while I did have them on display at the show). The best part is that I got these in such a way that I can sell them cheaper than the sources for this stuff would charge (and cheaper than what I now need to get on my usual “specimen” slices of Seymchan). These are mostly kind of slices but some are also of a bit odd shape ( kind of end pieces and some are like triangles or pyramids). Regardless, all of these are really eye-catching bright silvery metallic. These have a really interesting deep etch but have somehow been processed to leave them with a super shiny bright look to them (usually, longer dips in etching acid makes the etch kind of dark and dingy). Not really “specimens” as far as a collector might generally think but really pretty and eye catching.
1) Cut end etched (all sides) pieces of various shapes:
a) 16.8 gram slice - 35mm x 10mm x 6mm - $50
b) 33.7 gram slice - 34mm x 22mm x 8mm - $100
c) 49.5 gram slice - 38mm x 18mm x 11mm - $140
d) 79.4 gram end piece - 32mm x 32mm x 16mm - $220
GOLD BASIN, Arizona: Ordinary chondrite (L4). Found November 1995. Tkw = about 127kg.
I got a call from a “retired” metal-detector guy literally the night before I was to leave for Tucson. He had lived in Arizona some 20/25 years earlier and had spent a LOT of time metal-detecting for gold (he and his wife, actually). It turns out, they were working the Gold Basin gold site before anyone really understood that many of the “hot rocks” they were digging up were
meteorites. Obviously, once he found out he and his wife made it a point to keep all of these “hot rocks” they found after that. Boy did they find “hot rocks” (and, apparently a fair amount of gold nuggets). They worked the area until about 20 years ago and left to live in Wyoming, taking their substantial bucket of Gold Basin “hot rocks” with them. Well, about 10 years ago, his wife fell into ill health (I am sorry to say) making it important to move out of Wyoming (I love Wyoming but it is a pretty harsh place at times. Hard on even fully healthy people). His wife is still alive (thankfully) but in poor enough health that he felt the need to sell off his Gold Basin “hot rocks” to help fund her care (he had already parted with the gold they’d found. Yep, I did ask). What I am offering here are whole pieces as found (well, I cleaned the dirt off of them). Most are basically complete individuals, though many have chipped edges and secondary crust areas. This material has been on the ground for nearly 25,000 years so don’t expect super fresh looking stones here. I do plan to cut some of these things open (part of the “lapidary work” I am behind on) and offer end pieces of this meteorite in the future (even though it is a really old fall, it still looks very nice inside).
1) Individuals as found:
a) 11.2 grams - 22mm x 20mm x 13mm - $12
b) 20.5 grams - 30mm x 20mm x 12mm - $21
c) 42.0 grams - 34mm x 25mm x 20mm - $40
d) 86.8 grams - 45mm x 40mm x 20mm - $80
e) 180.8 grams - 50mm x 40mm x 30mm - $160
f) 385.6 grams - 75mm x 62mm x 40mm - $325
DARWIN GLASS, Impact glass from 700ky old Mt Darwin, Tasmania crater.
Here are some really interesting pieces of this crater glass that usually only comes in clunky dark angular chunks. I traded for a pretty good bag of this material in Tucson. Yep, most of it was the usual blocky chunks. However, I found some really interesting obviously stretched, ropy pieces. You can almost see the action of this stuff forming while flying and twisting through the air in these pieces. ALL of these have that obvious stretching, taffy pull look to them and, better yet, each and every one of these has a natural hole or bridge (often several in a single piece). I didn’t find much of this type material in my lot so I don’t have a lot of these pieces (why I am putting them on this list – these spring offerings tend to be a bit less responded to and I would most likely run out of these things quickly on a Fall or January offering).
1) Natural, taffy-pull look pieces as found:
a) 1.7 grams - 20mm x 11mm x 8mm - $8
b) 3.5 grams - 17mm x 15mm x 13mm - $15
c) 6.8 grams - 35mm x 18mm x 12mm - $25
d) 9.7 grams - 33mm x 20mm x 15mm - $33 - not piece in group photo.
MOON / MARS NECKLACES:
Steve Arnold (of ‘Meteorite Men” not Chicago) left some of these with me in Tucson right before he left town for home. I immediately sold one but I still have enough to offer them here. Each of these is a metal disk (coin, basically) that is actually a “Map” (front and back) of each respective body (are textured and toned to match, somewhat, the actual textures and tones of the real parent body. Each piece has a couple mm or so slice of the actual parent body material epoxied to it. The Moon coins are 25mm diameter and are struck in .999 fine silver. The Mars ones are just over 30mm in diameter and are struck in copper (so their natural color matches the natural color of Mars quite nicely). Each of these comes with an 18” silver plate chain and are in a plastic gemstone display container. Each, of course, comes with a signed Steve Arnold C.O.A.
1) Moon rock slice on 25mm .999 silver coin - $90
2) Mars rock slice on 30mm copper coin - $90
3) One of each - $160
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).
