Showing posts with label NWA 4502. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NWA 4502. Show all posts

Thursday, 20 August 2026

BLAINE REED METEORITES- LIST 288 A Few Small Things and Denver Show Info 18AUG2026

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

LIST 288 - August 18, 2026

Dear Collectors

DENVER SHOW INFO:
I will be in the same hotel as last year (Delta Hotels by Mariott. 10E120th Ave., Northglenn, CO 80233 for those of you that will be using GPS). As mentioned above, I will NOT be in one of the regular hotel rooms. I will be downstairs in the convention center level (the hotel and rooms are a floor above this). I don’t have an easy way to describe where I am in this venue. The best description I can give is I will be close to the south end of the sub-room that is on the east end of the convention center.

The dates (and times – I will NOT be able to stay open late like I usually do in this spot) are different this year. The show has been shortened substantially this year (smartly, in my opinion). The Hardrock (where the original classic Denver Mineral club show with the fantastic museum quality displays sets up) has moved to be the first weekend of the once longer show. The original timing used to work great. We had the serious early bird people show up the first weekend. Things got a little slow mid next week but then had a whole new set of people coming into town for the club, museum display show. Nope, now there is nothing to bring in new people. Last year showed that extra days did nothing but cost us extra dollars. We also will be opening what would seem an odd day – Wednesday. This is because there is a small show right across the street from us that opens that same day. It is not a big show but it certainly brings people interested in our kind of things (and those people were somewhat frustrated to find out that we would not be opening for several days yet when they wanted to visit our show last year).

The dates are: September 9th through September 14th. The times the convention center will be open are from 10Am to 6pm with closing on the 14th day being 4pm (we need to have everything packed up and out that night I believe).


Click on image to enlarge.

CARANCAS, Peru: Ordinary chondrite (H4-5). Fell September 15, 2007.
I personally think there must still be a really big piece of this in the ground down there. I cannot imagine how something that supposedly turned into small fragments and dust could have left such a big and deep hole in the ground. I know, when Chelyabinsk fell, everyone was saying that a pressure wave and some dust (all that was found on the surface) was what created a big hole through thick ice on a lake. Nope, they indeed did find a big Chelaybinsk piece buried in the bottom of the lake. I suspect that a similar big piece of Carancas exists – it just would be really hard to try and find out (the area has a really high water table so the impact pit rapidly turned into a small lake). Anyway, this is just a typical little fragment picked up shortly after the fall. It is in a nice 80mm x 60mm x 25mm plastic display box that has a picture of the crater and an ELKK Meteorites label.
.14g – 8mm x 6mm x 3mm - $40

NWA 4502: Carbonaceous chondrite. (CV3). Found 2005. Tkw = 100kg.
This one does not have a label (just a printout of part of its Meteoritical Bulletin listing) but I know it is correct. I have some pieces of this meteorite myself in inventory (this one, like the other things on this list came from Fredric Stephan). This was a complete little individual that has been cut in half. I would have cut it to get the largest surface area, but this one has been cut the other direction. None the less, it still shows the classic colors (tan, orangish/ red) chondrules of this particular CV3 find. This comes in a 40mm round gemstone type display holder.
12.8 gram end piece – 23mm x 15mm x 15mm - $75

NWA 5885: Enstatite achondrite (Aubrite). Found 2009. Tkw = 98grams.
This one is in a 55mm x 35mm x 15mm plastic display box and has an A. Bates Meteorite Collection label with it. This label has the wrong classification on it. IF it had been right, I’d probably put this one in my micro collection. The label has it as “EH5”. There are only a couple of those out there. The Meteortical Bulletin has this as “Aubrite”. Yep, that I believe. This certainly looks much more like an Aubrite (all be it one that has turned somewhat orangish brown from weathering). I remember seeing some identical material to this years ago. It was not much to look at and it was quite expensive (it was one of the first Aubrites from the NWA area that made it to collectors).
.45gram slice – 18mm x 8mm x 2mm - $25

NWA 5886: Enstatite chondrite (EL6). Found 2008. Tkw = 11grams.
Not sure I entirely believe the total known weight on this or not. This is a nice thin slice with a good surface area. IF there was only 11 grams of this, it must have been something of an angular somewhat thin fragment. This is certainly a possibility. It has been my experience that E chondrites often do like to weather apart into layers. My other thought is that this is actually a piece of the Al Hoggounia (001) stuff (that was classified by some as an EL6/7 and others as an EL3(!!!). This is very light gray, almost white with only a little brown staining around the edges. IF this is some of the Al Hoggounia it is one of the pieces that everyone said was “Fresh”. Nope. Actually something weird has happened to some the material that was found in the remains of an ancient lake. The lake waters had some kind of chemistry (phosphoric acid like maybe?) that leached out iron oxides making the stuff effected that way look fresh. Looking closely (with a loupe) this does look different than what you’d expect an enstatite chondrite to look. This has a lot of porosity to it – tons of small vesicles scattered uniformly throughout (where metal was, got oxidized and then leached out maybe?). Regardless, I am sure someone is going to want this as it is a substantial amount of an NWA # that likely few people will ever have. This comes in a plastic display box and an A. Bates label.
1.62gram slice – 20mm x 19mm x 2mm - $45

NWA 7510: HED Achondrite (Howardite). Found 2012. Tkw = 196 grams.
This one is in a plastic display box. It was in there such that the natural side was up. I switched it so the cut side (clearly showing that this is a howardite) is now up. The “backside” of this is actually really nice. It is wind-polished but has a nice medium brown fusion crust covering it. This comes with an A. Bates label.
.56gram end piece – 15mm x 11mm x 4mm - $25

NWA 8781: Carbonaceous chondrite, ungrouped. Found 2014. Tkw = 380grams.
This, to me, is probably the most interesting thing here. I have had very few “ungrouped” carbonaceous chondrites go through my hands and I am fairly certain I have not had a piece of this one before. This kind of looks like a cross between a CV type (some larger chondrules visible) and a CM type (dark background). From what little I was able to find, I saw something that said this looks like it might be related to the (quite new) CT carbonaceous group. This is a nice little part slice that has wind-polished fusion crust along about 1/3 of its edges. This comes in a plastic display box. No label but came with a copy of the important part of its Meteoritical Bulletin listing.
.25 gram slice – 10mm x 8mm x 2mm - $70


Shipping:

USA-
Rates continue to change faster that I can even get used to those already increased just months ago. Right now, it looks like $8 will cover my usual specimen in a jewelry box in a padded envelope. Most of the specimens listed here would be fine going that way. However, if you want “Priority” (and the slightly larger Carancas specimen might be better this way as it is too large for a jewelry box) that is now $12.

OVERSEAS-
This is also changing rapidly. I just mailed a package to Germany and was surprised by the costs and changes. First, the costs. That shipment, a jewelry box and padded envelope thing was something like $25. A small flat-rate priority box would have been closer to $56. The real surprise came when I went to “check out”. Another $38 was automatically added to the cost. It seems that I now must prepay all VAT, duties and taxes. The system tells me what those are going to be but did not clearly say that I WILL be paying those before the package is accepted for shipping (those extra "fees" were added onto the bill when I went to "check out"). As such, regardless of how I ship something, I will have to custom quote ALL out of US orders (I am hoping the system will actually allow me to see what the taxes and duties will be WITHOUT needing to create and pay for a shipping label first).

Wednesday, 6 December 2023

Blaine Reed Meteorites For Sale- LIST 269 06DEC2023

Blaine Reed Meteorites
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).