Blaine Reed
P.O. Box 1141
Delta, CO 81416
Ph/fax (970) 874-1487
……………………………………………………LIST 205
June 6, 2017
Dear collectors,
Here is a second offering pulled from a batch of material I recently got from a collector who has decided to trim his collection a bit.
I am going to try something new with this offering. I have taken a group photo of the items on this list (plus the 190g Wolf Creek just because I mentioned it). I have arranged them in the photo alphabetically from left to right, top to bottom (the Bassikounou is the top left item, then the Chinese Tektites, etc.).
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| Blaine Reed Meteorites For Sale, List 205 (Click on Image to Enlarge) |
Wow! This little piece was obviously picked up right after the fall. It shows heavy, super fresh black primary crust with some hints of orientation (the presence of a “roll-over rim” around one side of the stone). The crust is complete except for one small (around 4mm x 2mm) late fall chip in one part of the roll-over rim that shows a bright white interior. Nice really fresh specimen of this fall.
13.6 gram fresh, complete individual – 25mm x 19mm x 17mm - $80
CHINESE TEKTITES:
Here are three specimens that are indeed quite different from each other in shape and textures. I’ll give a bit of description for each in their individual listings.
16.6 grams irregular. This is my smallest and weirdest shaped piece. I was one of the first people to have Chinese Tektites in the more “recent” times. A Chinese mineral dealer wanted to trade me equal weights of Chinese meteorites for US meteorites (this was back in the days I had lots of different weathered meteorites from Kansas, Texas and such). Of coarse I said “sure”. Next year, he brought a big 50 pound or so box of “meteorites” insisting that I trader him 100 pounds of US meteorites for them. Unfortunately, he had brought me a box of Chinses Tektites. We had some pretty heated discussions as to why I couldn’t give him equal weight of actual meteorites for tektites. Towards the end of the show (this happened in Tucson) we came to some kind of agreement where I ended up with the box of tektites. Not a bad thing. At that time, Chinese tektites were not available anywhere on the market. Another plus was that the things looked completely different than any other tektites on the market. They had really weird shapes, deep fine grooving/ etching texture (on one side anyway. Most, as this piece, had a slightly curved smooth side - as if they were once part of a large smooth inside sphere that latter broke apart). One person commented that the things looked like some kind of strange “rubble”. Anyway, this is a piece from those days (possibly even that original batch as the previous owner got it from me). I do have some of these “original batch” pieces around here somewhere so if there are more people that want a similar piece to this one after it sells, I’ll try and dig them up and make them available.
16.6 grams irregular shape– 40mm x 25mm x 10mm - $5
b) 36.5gram quasi tear-drop. This one is a long stretched out piece that definitely narrows out towards the tail. It has a good amount of the typical fine deep grooving/ pitting typical for Chinese tektites.
36.5g grams quasi tear-drop – 75mm x 20mm x 15mm - $10
c) 110.9 gram tear drop/ hershey’s kiss. Now this one is really nice! It has a super shape. It is a cross between a tear drop and hershey’s kiss. Overall, it has the distinct tear-drop shape (nice long thin tail) but has a large head concentrated at one end (no gradual thinning on this one). A really nice piece that I considered keeping myself.
110.9 gram tear-drop/ hershey’s kiss – 80mm x 40mm x 30mm - $50
GOLD BASIN, Arizona: (L4). Found 1995. Tkw = 125+ kilograms.
There were a lot of pieces of this meteorite recovered, but I don’t see many available today. This is supposedly one of (if not the) oldest known U.S. strewn fields – having possibly fallen 20 to 25 thousand years ago. Looking at this piece, you’d never guess that kind of age. This is a nice solid individual/ fragment that has a roughly 45mm x 20mm cut face that shows a nice, quite fresh, mottled gray and brown matrix with quite a lot of metal visible. The exterior is also fairly fresh. This shows several levels of crusting. The heaviest (primary) crust on the very back still shows flow lines. Another surface is completely crusted but has a less smooth, rounded texture so it is not fully developed as the “primary” crust. Two more faces look like they may be old fractured surfaces, though one does seem to show some smoothing so it might (actually both could be) be a very light tertiary crusted surface.
131.6 gram individual with polished face – 45mm x 30mm x 30mm - $130
IMPACTITE, Monturaqui crater, Chile.
Here are two pieces in one display container. One is a 7.2 gram complete piece that is natural as found. The other is a small (1.5 gram) cut fragment (cut face is about 15mm x 12mm) that shows the melted/ brecciated structure plus at least one clear nickel-iron bleb (a bit of the iron meteorite that formed the crater).
8.7 grams: two specimens. One natural, one cut - $15
PHILIPPINITE: Tektite from the Philippine Islands.
This is likely from the Rizal provence (making it a “Rizalite”). It shows lots of the wide/ deep grooves of tektites from this area. However, this one is a completely odd shape rather than the usual round specimens. There are some areas of “modern” chipping on one end, but the bulk of the specimen is natural ancient surfaces (so it is not merely from a weirdly broken originally round specimen). Interesting piece.
20.9 grams – 40mm x 25mm x 20mm - $20
SAHARA (98280): likely (L6).
Unfortunately, this one never got fully reported. That is kind of a shame as this is actually a really nice specimen. It is quite fresh. The exterior shows nice dark (all be it a little dirty in spots) gray/ chocolate brown fusion crust (with only light wind-polishing). The interior has a great breccia structure showing light brown angular to somewhat rounded clasts (of all sizes up to around 1 centimeter or so) surrounded by black shock veins/ melt material. I sold a couple similar (but NWA) end pieces in Tucson for closer to $2/g.
53.8 gram end piece – 40mm x 25mm x 20mm - $60
WOLF CREEK, Australia: Found 1947.
Shale balls (oxidized iron meteorite) and fragments is about the only thing you will ever see from this crater. I think only a kilogram or so of fresh metal was found. This is a nice little basically complete shale ball as found. This was originally bought from me years ago. I have not had a lot of pieces of Wolf Creek over the years but far fewer small piece like this that weren’t just angular fragments that came from a larger ball that got broken apart. A quick check shows that I offered some larger similar pieces on a list a little over a year ago. Further checking shows that I have only one specimen remaining from that offering (a 190g complete shale ball for $200). This is a nice little piece for someone that wants a small yet still rounded complete shale ball.
25.5 gram shale ball as found – 30mm x 25mm x 15mm - $40
