P.O. Box 1141, Delta, CO 81416
Ph/fax (970) 874-1487
brmeteorites@yahoo.com
LIST 269 - December 6, 2023
Dear Collectors,
This will likely be my last offering of the year. I got done doing the tedious job of “Inventory” – where I open every box/ bag on every shelf and corner and weigh and catalog all the stuff I have around here. As usual, I found a few things that I forgot I had and a few things where I only had one piece left. IF I can sell those, then I don’t have to have an extra line in my inventory records (no inventory of a particular meteorite present = no need to have that name in my records any more). I did find a couple items I picked up in Denver as well that I kind of forgot I had. Overall, I am pricing all of these well below what I was normally asking on them (and below what I thought I might ask on the “new” things). Again, sell them now then I don’t have to record them and keep them on the inventory list at the end of the year.
NOTE: It seems that every day I get a problem dropped in my lap from out of nowhere. One I did nothing to create (other than existing I suppose) but I still need to deal with it. Yesterday’s was a small 4” by 5” post card. I almost tossed it out as junk mail. Glad I didn’t. It was my internet provider with a ‘Reminder” that I needed to IMMEDIATELY contact them and find a different way to have internet service. Odd that it was a “further reminder” as I had, up until that moment, received NO notification that there was a problem what so ever (including on or with the bill I received not that long ago). It seems that much of the equipment they use to provide internet service to lots of people is no longer being supported by the manufacturer of said equipment. As such, once anything breaks in that system, it cannot be fixed. I WILL lose my internet. I tried to play their game and see “what are your options” but could not get them on the phone (it seems that they have already. Somehow, disabled the web account we had set up just for such things). So, onto looking for new service. Thankfully, an internet service associated with our electric service had brought fiber optic onto my property back in April. I am now in the process of changing over to that. However, I have been informed that many hundreds pf people in my area are signing up (for the same reasons I presume) and it might a considerable amount of time before I can get hooked up on the new service. I am making this all public as IF a part breaks in part of the old service before I am connected to the new service, I will be “off line” pretty much completely (aside from the occasional sit in a restaurant parking lot WIFI connection or such but I REALLY hate doing ANYTHING even remotely private (like signing into my e-mail account) on such systems. So, IF you e-mail me with something important (an order/ question, etc. Sending a link to an interesting video sometimes don’t get responded to anyway) and don’t get any response from me – CONSIDER CALLING, my e-mail might be completely gone (the phone though, for the time being anyway, is a land line and should continue working regardless of my internet situation).
CALDWELL, Kansas: Ordinary chondrite (L impact melt breccia). Found 1961. Tkw = 12.9kg.
L-impact melts used to be one of the most desired meteorites. I think the first was the strange slag looking Cat Mountain, Tucson AZ meteorite that Robert Haag had. That stuff sold for well over $100/g. Then there was (some pieces, much of the stone was truly “ordinary” chondrite) of Chico, New Mexico. Steve Arnold (of Meteorite Men, not Chicago) worked for years trying to get a piece of this stone from the person that had it. Years of “No” eventually turned into “yes” and we bought (finally) some of it. Unfortunately is was not particularly cheap and (more unfortunately for us) plenty of really nice impact melt meteorites had come out of NWA (I still have pieces of a number of really nice different ones of those). This is my VERY LAST piece of this named L impact melt. Frankly, this is not a particularly pretty meteorite BUT this is your last chance to get a piece of this from me (and I don’t think there is a lot of this material floating around out there either). I priced it at (or even slightly below) what one of my NWA impact melts normally sell for.
41.2 gram part slice – 80mm x 60mm x3mm - $150 SOLD
GUADALUPE y CALVO, Mexico: Iron. Hexahedrite (IIAB). Found 1971. Tkw = 58.63kg.
I had a fair amount of this stuff pass through my hands the past few years. It has proven to be popular material. This is the meteorite that was used for years as a dog-food bowl on a ranch in Mexico before it found its way to Tucson and then onto a group of collectors and dealers. I sold all of the pieces I got back when we bought it together years (decades?) ago. I got these pieces from the collector that ended up with the biggest piece of this meteorite once we cut it up. I am now down to my last piece. Jim has no more to sell either (whatever he has remaining of this meteorite, he is keeping). I originally had this piece priced at $1100 (and have come close to selling it at a show once or twice). Now I am pricing it (temporarily) as a “year-end special”. If I don’t sell it from this offering and do end up having to carry it over into next year’s inventory records, then I’ll probably put it back up in the $1100 range. This does come with a(more recent copy) card I made up when I sold my pieces years ago as well as a Jim Schwade collection label.
349.1 gram part slice – 120mm x 70mm x 5mm - $750 SOLD
HAJMAH (C), Oman: Ordinary chondrite (L5/6). Found 1958. Tkw = 1132 grams.
Can’t say that I have ever seen a piece of this meteorite before. We have LOTS of meteorites from Oman but the Meteorites A to Z book shows that there are (were anyway) only 6 actual named meteorites back before 2008 (when the book was published). The British Museum “Catalog of Meteorites” says that 2 pieces were found (one 1065g and the other 67 grams) during oil prospecting in the area in 1958. This (like the Libyan Glass below) is from a collector who bought it at an auction long ago. It looks like he may have paid $583 for the piece. That is $10/g! These days it is easy to find fairly nice stone meteorite slices for a dollar or two a gram (I still have nice slices of Ghubara available for around $2/g). However, back 20 plus years ago, this was not the case. As, at the time, there few to no Oman meteorites on the market, I can see someone paying pretty good money to add this country to their collection. That along with the fact that so little of this was found certainly could explain a $10/g valuation. This looks to be a piece that likely came from the British Museum (they had all but 55g of it according to the Catalog). It certainly has the old-style museum cut - really thick. It seems that most museums prefere(d?) to have thick slices. We collectors came along and decided we want thin. Thin gives you more surface area texture for less weight (and cost). As such, if one were inclined, this piece could easily be split into 3 (or even 4) thinner equal sized slices (you’d have to use a wire saw to get 4 though). The auction tag has this at 58.3 grams and that is indeed spot on for the whole specimen. However, it looks like someone was starting another cut on one corner of this piece (looks like they tries a couple times to get a cut started there. One of the cuts did get around 1cm into the piece. The resulting thinner piece (1cm x 15mm, 1.0g) has broken off, but still remains with the specimen.
57.3 gram slice – 42mm x 37mm x 12mm - $200 SOLD
LIBYAN DESERT GLASS:
This is a piece that I picked up in Denver. It came to me as part of a collection from a collector that picked it up at an auction decades ago. It looks like he may have paid $330 for the piece (this comes with the auction ID slip). However, that has the weight of this wrong. The dimensions match just fine but they had the weight as 55grams. It is really 28.8 grams. So, it looks like this might have cost the buyer a bit over $10/g. Actually, at the time (this was bought not long after the first pieces of this stuff in recent history started coming out – sometime around 1988 maybe) this would have been a fair price. This is a nice higher quality piece that is really quite clean and clear. It does have a “fresh” (but still possibly hundreds of years old) chip (about 15mm x 6mm) on the bottom but is, otherwise all natural wind sculpted surfaces. The auction tag indicates that this is from the Walter Zitschell collection. That makes perfect sense as, I seem to recall, he was the one who first obtained marketable quantities of Libyan Glass (most of the pieces were really big. Hundreds of grams plus. Big enough such that I could not afford one as the starting price was $10/g. I probably would have gotten a piece this size myself when it first came out, had one been offered to me).
28.8 gram natural fragment – 65mm x 25mm x 15mm - $70 SOLD
NWA (4502): Carbonaceous chondrite (CV3). Found 2008. Tkw about 35kg.
This is actually not a piece that I’d normally put on a “get off of inventory” list at the end of the year. Actually, I pulled this out from some pretty deep storage as I had a museum ask me for “pass around” specimens. One of the things they wanted was a carbonaceous chondrite. Well, I don’t really have too many of those big (or solid) enough for that purpose. Deep digging back then brought this end piece to light. After months and months of waiting for their decisions on what specimens they wanted (I had multiple options of some of the other type meteorites they were looking for) they finally (like a few weeks ago) admitted that the deal was NOT going to happen. Rather than go through the effort of putting this back in deep storage (which I could have done had I remembered I had it pulled out and set aside elsewhere when doing inventory) I decided, since its been a long time since I have offered any of this meteorite, to offer it here and now (if it sells, I won’t have to pull things apart to put it where it belongs). This is a nice solid end piece. The back, natural side, has a 6mm x 4mm CAI that fluoresces pinkish purple under the right UV light.
63.1 gram end piece – 65mm x 42mm x 10mm - $250 SOLD
SALAICES, Mexico: Ordinary chondrite (H4). Found 1971. Tkw = 24.5kg.
I kind of picked this one up because I have a customer who runs a store in Mexico. He, generally, has an eye out for any Mexican meteorites that have not been easily available recently (and isn’t stupidly priced). This one certainly meets that criteria. I usually see him at the major shows (Tucson and Denver). I thought I’d see him in Denver this year (where he would probably buy this piece) but he did not show (but, to be honest, a lot of people I thought I’d see didn’t come this year). Not wanting to carry this over in inventory until Tucson (the next chance I have to see him) I decided to offer it here. This is set up in a Riker and has a Michael Casper Meteorites label with it.
21.5 gram part slice – 36mm x 23mm x 6mm - $90 SOLD
THUATHE, Lesotho: Ordinary chondrite (H4/5). Fell July 21, 2002. Tkw = about 30kg.
It has been awhile since I have any of this one. This came to me in Denver. It belonged to Fred Olsen and was put into a COMETS auction during one of the Denver shows years ago. It is a nice piece. Nicer than many of the pieces I have had of this fall. It has really good crust coverage (only one 5mm x 5mm chip). The crust is really fresh and shows evidence of several breakage and crusting levels (as well as some minor “roll over rims”). A superior specimen of this meteorite fall! This comes with the COMETS auction tag (green paper), one of Fred’s Mineral & Fossil Supply business cards (that has auction notes for this piece on the back) as well as one of the cards I made up for this meteorite when I had pieces of it.
39.9 gram complete individual – 31mm x 30mm x 20mm - $250 SOLD
Shipping:
USA- It does seem that I can, generally, send small orders (jewelry box in a padded envelope kind) for around $5 still This is by what they are now calling “Ground Advantage”. Though it is claimed to be going by trucks (and supposedly a couple days longer) I have found that things are getting to where they need to be pretty much the same time as the old “first class” used to. For things people prefer to send “Priority”, the costs are $10 for fairly small things (whatever can fit in a small flat-rate box) and around $17 for large things.
For 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). Though I have not sent much this way, what research I have done seems to indicate that those small orders (jewelry box in padded envelope) are still around $15 or $16 to send. Obviously, I’ll have to custom quote shipping on larger items (as usual).
