P.O. Box 1141, Delta, CO 81416
Ph/fax (970) 874-1487
brmeteorites@yahoo.com
LIST 283 - January 4, 2026
Dear Collectors
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
TUCSON SHOW INFO: At this point, I am planning on being gone from January 27th until around February 17th. However, I MAY try going to Tucson a bit earlier this year just to see what happens. I get people telling me they have been in Tucson for days and are going home before I even unload my car. Years when I have shown up early I hear “not buying anything until everyone else is set up and I see what they have”. Kind of interested to see what the situation is now. IF I do go early, it will likely only be a few days early (leaving around Jan 23rd perhaps). Regardless, for the show itself, I will be in my usual spot “Days Inn” (665 N. Freeway, Tucson) and I’ll be in my usual room - #134. I should be open by mid to late morning Friday January 30th (as early as the 26th if I do decide to go early). I currently plan to stay through the bitter end which would be February 14th but may leave early if things look like they will be as slow that last week as they have been the past couple years. I will open the door most days at 10AM but will try to make it a bit earlier than that when possible. I will have the door open most evenings until around 9:30pm or so (or later if people are visiting/ still wandering about).
Notes on my “spring” list: I usually do an offering sometime in April/ May. Currently, it looks like I will skip this offering this year. I have a lot of travels (including out of the country) piled up the months after Tucson and I will not have time to gather, prep and list enough material (let alone being home to take, pack and ship orders). I may send out a note (with a few meteorites offered?) sometime mid- summer telling people about Denver in September (currently, I have no show space for this show).
A note concerning the photos in this offering:
I want everyone receiving this post with imbedded group photos of the items on this list that the item pictured MAY NOT be the identical item you receive (except for cases where I have clearly labeled an item as “the only one this size” or similar). I usually have (and sell) multiple pieces of each size of the items listed (sometimes MANY of them – far to many to put all in a photograph for people to pick from). What I normally do is send the first person that asks for a particular item the largest piece available in whatever size range it is that the specimen they are buying belongs to (when I send a piece that is not in the photo, you generally get a very similar but slightly larger piece). This came about as MOST of my sales from these periodic larger catalogs come from the paper mailed version of this offering where no photos exist so customers don’t know exactly what the piece they ordered looks like (and are usually quite happy to receive a slightly larger specimen instead). So, you can certainly request the exact item in the group photo and I am happy to send it if someone else hasn’t already requested it. Please let me know if you would likely ONLY be happy with receiving that actual pictured piece(s) and I will NOT do any substitution(s) in your order.
Henbury, Australia: Meteorite Shale/Oxide.
Here are pieces of oxide/shale from the famous Henbury craters discovered in 1931. There have been some arguments as to exactly how this forms. Most believe that it is just by a meteorite oxidizing over many years after reaching the ground and others are thinking it might be a form of “fusion crust”. In this case, the hot metal being exposed to the oxygen rich air blast from the fall or melted and splashed out of the forming crater(s) rapidly turns some into this material (I can personally think of some problems with this idea). Anyway, many of these pieces are kind of cool (and are all affordable) and the biggest is really quite a nice paperweight. One of the 100gram bags would be ideal for those that want to give friends and family a holdable sized piece of “meteorite material” and not spend a lot doing it (and doing this might spark an interest in meteorites and science in some of those people).
1) Meteorite Shale/ Oxide fragments as found:
a) 11.2 grams - 25mm x 20mm x 7mm - $7
b) 25.6 grams - 35mm x 20mm x 12mm - $15
c) 43.0 grams - 48mm x 35mm x 10mm - $25
d) 95.0 grams - 50mm x 30mm x 25mm - $50 – only one this size.
e) 211.9 grams - 107mm x 50mm x 25mm - $105 – only one this size.
2) 100gram+ bag of mixed pieces generally around 2cm to 4cm or so in size - $35
SILVERTON (TEXAS):, Ordinary chondrite (H4). Found 1938. Tkw = about 14kg.
This is a meteorite I got “out of the field” (bought from the finder) many, many years ago. It was 1986 or 1987 when I got it. I had hoped it would be a “new” meteorite. My maps of already known meteorites from the area showed it might not be. The closest likely possibility is that the 10kg piece I bought from the farmer who ploughed it up (in 1981 he believed) was another piece of Silverton - a meteorite that Nininger had reported as three pieces totaling close to 4kg being found in 1938 (so, clearly there was something of a strewn field in the area). I had trouble getting the comparison work done. The only place that had a known piece of one of the original Silverton stones was in Germany. Despite my giving them a slice and pre-made thin-section of my material, it still took some years to get my answer. When I did get the results it was that my “new” stone was indeed now the “main mass” of the Silverton (Texas) meteorite.
1) Part slices:
a) 7.2 grams - 20mm x 15mm x 7mm - $28
b) 14.2 grams - 34mm x 22mm x 7mm - $55
c) 28.9 grams - 40mm x 34mm x 7mm - $110
d) 63.6 grams - 50mm x 50mm x 7mm - $240
e) 164.5 grams - 90mm x 75mm x 7mm - $600 – has 6mm metal nodule.
NWA (12641),Carbonaceous chondrite (CK4). Found 2018. Tkw = 613grams.
This was a single stone recovery. The stone didn’t have any real fusion crust remaining so it was easy to see that it was something interesting right from the start. The interior shows dark gray chondrules (but not a lot of them) in a somewhat coarse-grained matrix (and this stone IS mostly “matrix”) that is mostly gray but has something of a greenish tint to it. This meteorite has quite a lot of Cr rich magnetite (but no fresh metal) in it (in both the chondrules and matrix). Some of this
magnetite has oxidized to orange/brown secondary iron hydroxides (there is not a lot of this though). Research work says that this also has “sparse, small fine-grained Calcium Aluminum Inclusions” (those things that formed first in the cloud that would become the solar system and often contain pre-solar system grains like diamonds a silicon carbides). I have looked at a few cut pieces of this (interestingly, the sides of these slices that have not been sanded show the structure MUCH clearer than the sides that were “polished”) and I have not seen anything that I would say is clearly a CAI (so they are obviously quite small).
1) Slices/ part slices:
a) 1.0 grams - 15mm x 10mm x 2mm - $12
b) 2.1 grams - 28mm x 14mm x 2mm - $25
c) 4.0 grams - 32mm x 28mm x 2mm - $45
d) 8.4 grams - 47mm x 28mm x 2mm - $90
e) 17.2 grams - 63mm x 54mm x 2mm - $170 – complete slice.
MILLBILLILLIE, Australia: HED achondrite (Eucrite). Fell October 1960. Tkw = around 150kg.
Here are some meteorites that, like the Irghizites below, I have had set aside for a loooong time. And I do mean long. These have been set aside for AT LEAST 35 years now! When Millbillille was readily available I made it a point to “stash” some nice small complete individuals. These are all really nice. They do have the usual orange dirt on most of them. I did try several ways in the long ago past to remove this (by both mechanical and chemical methods) but those all ended up looking bad, so I choose to just leave these as they are. These have nice shapes, only minor chips showing the bright white interior and lots of flow lines in the fusion crust. I’ve watched for years and years but have not really seen anything in the way of nice complete (small) eucrite individuals come out of the NWA areas. Complete little individual eucrites are a scarce thing, even including NWAs.
1) Complete individuals (mostly) as found:
a) 8.8 grams - 25mm x 15mm x 15mm - $170
b) 15.7 grams - 25mm x 20mm x 17mm - $300
c) 24.2 grams - 35mm x 25mm x 20mm - $450
d) 59.5 grams - 45mm x 30mm x 25mm - $1100
SEYMCHAN, Russia: Sotny-iron (pallasite). Found 1967.
Yeah, I know, I have offered a fair amount of this over the past years BUT I have not ever offered any in this form. No, not like slice, end piece, whole but in how it is displayed. These pieces are each really nice pallasite slices (the two largest have some larger areas of metal that have a great etch structure that really make these pieces a visual treat). It is HOW they are displayed that is different. These are in a metal picture frame (chrome) and are set between two pieces of glass (the front piece being an expensive non-glare “Museum glass”) so light can pass through to show the wonderful natural “stained glass window” look of these piece. I make these frames all myself. I custom cut the metal frame parts and make the custom cut (black) mats (these are hand cut with a jeweler’s saw to tightly fit the shape of the slice). A LOT of work but these do look pretty nice. I have been told that a good number of these I have made (also with non-pallasite meteorites) are hanging in some museums (including the Smithsonian I was told). I decided that I should not hold these only for shows but offer them to everyone even by mail.
1) Pallasite slices in custom fit metal frame.
a) 62.1 grams – 100mm x 65mm x 2mm – frame is 5”x 7” - $1100
b) 154.9 grams – 140mm x 115mm x 2mm – frame is 7” x 8” - $2350
c) 333.8 grams – 230mm x 120mm x 2mm – frame is 8” x 11” - $4700
IRGHIZITE, Russia: Zhamanshin Crater.
Here is another item I have had set aside for years and years. I can’t remember how long ago I last offered some of these on a list, but it has been a long time. The Zamanshin Crater is 14km (8.6miles) in diameter and is believed to have formed right around 900 thousand years ago. It is also believed to be the most recent impact of size great enough to have possibly created “nuclear winter” environmental effects (but not big enough to have caused mass extinction, thankfully). There are many different types of impact glasses found around this crater and Irghizites are the ones that have generally been looked at as tektites. These are all pieces I set aside as being particularly interesting. They have wild, ropy shapes (often many stretched glass strands piled up on top of each other) and all have natural holes (most have several). These are all standard to somewhat larger than average size and all are a feast for the eyes under magnification.
a) about .8g 10mm x 15mm x 6mm fancy individual - $20
Shipping:
US Shipping: Well, the post office has been raising prices at a faster rate lately. My small specimen in a small jewelry box in a padded envelope now costs me almost $8 now! Lately, the cheapest I have been able to send such a thing (to closer addresses) has been $7.80 (and that is for “ground advantage”) . I think small flat-rate priority boxes are at least $11. Bigger things I’ll probably have to custom quote (though I don’t have any things on this offering that would require anything bigger than a small flat-rate box).
Overseas shipping, it does look like the “First Class” option still exists (thankfully, because most overseas small flat-rate costs are bumping up against $50 these days). I will, likely, need to custom quote even the “first class” jewelry box in a padded envelope none the less. Those used to be around $15 or $16. However, I seem to recall that such a package was quoted at closer to $35 going to France a couple months ago (that customer decided to go with the faster Priority).
