Blaine Reed
P.O. Box 1141
Delta, CO 81416
Ph/fax (970) 874-1487
P.O. Box 1141
Delta, CO 81416
Ph/fax (970) 874-1487
LIST 220
October 30, 2018
Dear collectors,
It has been awhile since I posted a list. I seem to have been living in a full speed run since the Denver show. That run yet continues. I would normally send out this offering on November 6th – the first Tuesday of the month (I may end up switching to the first and third Mondays of the month for these offerings sometime soon as the schedule conflict that had me tied up Mondays has long since gone away) but then I realized that I’ll be leaving the next day for my Socorro trip.
Notes on Socorro, Mew Mexico Mineral Symposium:
As mentioned above, I leave November 7th and should be back home November 14th (This assumes good weather. As I have to go over some of the toughest passes – Red Mountain, etc. I could end up leaving a day earlier or getting back home a day later if bad weather sets in). Assuming no disasters (I have had a lot of problems with motels simply loosing my reservations this year) I will, as usual, be set up at the Comfort Inn on the north end of town (on the frontage road on the west side of the interstate). I am supposed to be on the bottom floor, last room on the left at the west end of the hallway. We have had problems with some government agency in the area wanting all of the ground floor rooms at the same time for themselves and occasionally some of us dealers get routed to other floors. I’ll try to hang a couple signs in the lobby and such if this ends up happening to me. I should be set up and open by mid day Friday the 9th. I will be gone from around 5pm to around 6pm or so that evening for a “Friends of the Museum” event at the mineral museum about a mile away. I’ll likely be open until around 11pm or midnight after getting back. On Saturday, I should be open around 5pm until 11pm or so again. If you do want to visit the show and need to see me some other time you can try calling ( cell (970) 417-8783 – this ONLY works while I am traveling at shows so DON’T put this number in any files as a regular contact number) and I’ll see if we can schedule something that will work for you.
ALLENDE, Mexico: Carbonaceous chondrite (CV3). Fell February 8, 1969.
I got this piece as part of a collection and kind of misplaced it for a bit (this would have certainly sold in Denver had I brought it). This was a later recovery specimen as it had some dirt adhering to it. I soda-blasted it and most of this has now been removed. This piece now looks quite nice. Lots of nice black crust – much fuller coverage, less and smaller chipping than most Allende specimens.
36.3 grams complete individual – 40mm x 25mm x 20mm - $400
BRENHAM, Kansas: Stony-iron (Pallasite). Found 1881.
Here is a bag of specimens that I got with Linton Rohr’s collection. It contains crystals, fragments and slices. This stuff is rusty but still shows lots of metal on most pieces. I think Linton had planned on cleaning these up, coating them and then selling them. I kind of thought of that myself (I don’t think it would take too much effort to make the bulk of this material look nice for resale), but just haven’t had the time. Most of the slices are in the 2 to 3cm size range, so they’d make nice specimens when fixed up.
82.2 grams crystals, fragments, slices in bag - $40
CAMEL DONGA, Australia. HED achondrite (eucrite). Found 1984.
Not sure where I got this piece, just found it hiding with my “new” stuff for offerings material recently. I remember when this meteorite first came out. The pieces were all pitch black covered in super shiny crust. It is not known when this fell, but it could not have been too long before its discovery. This eucrite is strange in that it has a fairly high content of fresh iron (some iron nodules being large enough to, sometimes, make it difficult to split some of these in half). This iron also seems to have made pieces of this meteorite weather fairly rapidly out in nature. Pieces that came out only a few years later had already lost much of the glassy luster of the crust and had substantial amounts of adhering dirt and rust. I can tell that this piece is not one of the earliest pieces recovered but it likely not recovered terribly long after. This does have some (very minor) adhering dirt (mostly down in the contraction cracks In the fusion crust) and there are a few small areas that have lost a bit of the original luster but, overall, it is quite fresh compared to most pieces I have seen available of this meteorite in recent years.
13.5 gram complete individual – 32mm x 22mm x 10mm - $250
CHINGA, Russia: Iron. Ni-rich ataxite, ungrouped. Found 1913.
This is a piece I sold to a collector out east many years ago. When I go it back I kind of had to say “wow”! This thing looks really, really nice for this meteorite. It has the flattish disk/ lensoidal shape typical for pieces of this meteorite but this has a wonderful solid patina to it. This does not show any of the scaling, flaking that is typical for pieces of this meteorite. This has a really nice chocolate brown, hard somewhat shiny patina covering its surface. No evidence of rust scaling at all. I also know that this has not been cleaned recently to hide any earlier scaling as it still has my original name and weight sticker on it. So, this one is a nice, apparently very stable piece of a rare type meteorite.
881.9 gram complete, solid individual – 115mm x 70mm x 30mm - $450
MONTURAQUI, Chile, Impact Glass.
Here are a few more pieces of the Monturaqui impact glass that I offered (and quickly sold out of) on a list around a year or so ago. I managed to trade a few more pieces out of the guy that recovered this himself on a trip to the crater back in September of 2014. This is NOT the usual, commonly available “impactities” from this crater (I have some of those for $1/g if anybody wants some). This is actually a light pinkish gray glass that was likely formed from the melting of rhyolite lavas in the area of the crater during impact. It does have some vesicles and rock fragments but far, far less than the black glass cemented fragments of the impactites. I was told that only a few tens of grams of this material was found after intensive searching, so it is likely quite rare. Note: The last piece (on the right) in the group photo of this offering is NOT the 9.5g piece (this one measures 35mm x 25mm x 10mm) but a 2.0 gram piece that was originally supposed to be offered. The 9.5 gram piece now on the list was on hold for a customer who called a few minutes ago (well after the photo had been taken and uploaded) to pass on it (too much $ for them at the moment they decided) and took the 2.0g (the next largest piece I had) instead.
Fragments as found - $15/g. Sizes available: .73g, .90g, 1.0g, 1.7g, 9.5g
NUEVO MERCURIO, Mexico: Ordinary chondrite (H5). Fell December 15, 1978. Tkw = 200kg.
Here is a specimen that I thought was really two separate partly crusted stones. Well, they are indeed that BUT they also fit together to form one larger stone. Even put together, this still looks like a partly crusted stone as there is one large face that looks to be a fresh break (in addition to chipping of the crust on the back side – quite common on pieces of this meteorite for some reason – probably a tight fall group resulting in lots of collisions between falling pieces or smashing into and rolling around on a hard, rocky surface maybe). However, close inspection of this large fracture surface reveals the presence of very light secondary crust (only a few tiny dots of black crust perched on high points on some areas) so this is actually a very late atmospheric break (however, the break that made this into two pieces is clearly a ground impact break). This comes with an Aerolite (Geoff Notkin) label that notes that this specimen was from the King collection.
127.6 gram broken individual – 65mm x 25mm x 25mm - $1250
TATAHOUINE, Tunisia: HED achondrite (Diogenite). Fell June 27, 1931. Tkw = 13.5kg +
I have always considered this to be one of the weirdest looking meteorites. It is composed of large, blocky green crystals that have dark shock bands going through it. Years ago, I think this was the ONLY known unbrecciated diogenite. I am not sure if this is still the case, but I would not be surprised if it is as I certainly have not seen anything new similar come out. Anyway, most of this material was in the form of small gravel-sized pieces from sub-gram to a few grams in size maybe (I have a pretty good stash of those things myself). However, I recall when some “large” pieces of this came out and all the excitement that brought about. Usually, meteorites (unlike gold nuggets) get cheaper per gram as their size goes up. Nope, not this time. These large pieces were commanding huge premiums – I think around $100/g (when the small pieces were lucky to bring $15 or $20/g) was pretty common. Well, the person I got this piece from did indeed pay around $100/g for it. He got it from Robert Haag. No invoice or card came with it but it does have the original bag it came in with Robert’s very recognizable (to me anyway) hand writing saying “Tatahouine Diogenite 12g” on it (I have added the correct weight of 11.9g). Neat piece, neat meteorite and quite rare in this size.
11.9 gram large fragment as found – 25mm x 19mm x 10mm - $500
