P.O. Box 1141, Delta, CO 81416
Ph/fax (970) 874-1487
brmeteorites@yahoo.com
Dear Collectors
It has been a long time since I sent out an offering. Part of this is because I have been so tied up this spring/ summer (soon to be fall) with many other things. Part of it is that I simply have not had new things to offer. The few new things I have gotten this summer have quickly sold to people simply calling and asking about/ for new/ different things. There has not been a lot of this BUT it has been more than enough to soak up the things I had planned on putting on offerings like this. The things being offered here I had planned on debuting at the Denver Show. I suspect that I would have already sold most of these if I had NOT set them aside for this purpose.
DENVER INFO:
Yep, that show is coming soon, too soon for me, frankly. I have lots of prep work that needs doing and a completely NEW venue I have to figure out how to fit in (and that will require new tables and equipment from what I am seeing). YES, we are in yet another NEW/DIFFERENT place for this show once again. This new spot, hopefully, will be long term and is certainly easier to reach from the other shows than we were last year. This new location is Delta Hotel, Denver Thornton. This is located on the South East corner of the intersection of I-25 and 120th (actually, it is in back behind the shopping center on that corner). I will be in room 114 (yes, a hotel room once more, unfortunately. I will not be able to have the open, inviting space where people could hang out I had in the last two show locations. No such space was available in this new distinctly smaller venue so back to a room for me. At least I was able to have a ground floor room). I want to be open the afternoon of September 4th (the show is having a “soft opening” then) but I question my ability to get things set up by then. This new spot is NOT so easy to work with like my last new spot was (the space I had last year was fantastic for easy set up). So, I suspect it will take a considerable amount more time to jig-saw things into the room nicely. At worst, I plan to be open by 10am Friday (September 5th). I will try to be open a bit earlier (9am?) on other mornings of the show. I will stay open until 9, 9:30, 10pm most nights (visitors depending. No people around at all, then maybe call it a night earlier). The show runs through Saturday September 13th. Barring any plagues, big health crisis, national emergencies, war, what have you, I plan to stay through the end (some people are closing up earlier to either set up at or visit one of the other shows that only runs the last few days of this time period). I’ll send out more “show announcements” if any of this changes for any reason.
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AUSTRALITE BUTTONS
Well, nice partial buttons anyway. These both have nice complete cores (that show strong pressure waves on their leading rounded face) and differing amounts of the flange left surrounding it. I bought these in Tucson and then forgot I had them. They had gotten put kind of where they belonged- with Australites. I re-discovered them while packing things up for the Creede show a couple weeks ago (I bring some Australites there). I got them from a guy that had a fairly good assortment of Australites. Most of his were exactly like the ones I already have (cores, no flange). Some of them were fairly large (but not larger than ones I already have) and he had a pretty large price on them. I was able to finally convince him to sell me just the buttons after showing him that I had plenty like the others (and at a price cheaper than he was asking for his) and I was NOT going to buy the entire lot. Anyway, I ended up with 3 pieces (one I am keeping for the time being – it is very similar to the large one offered here). He said that these came out of a museum –The South Australian Museum in Adelaide I believe. Stupid me didn’t write it down believing that I would remember (and then managed to forget that I even had the things). The smaller piece does still have its museum number painted on it (looks like 1202). The larger piece has been repaired. I am just happy that whomever found the pieces was smart enough to keep them together and then put them back together later (likely a museum worker). The smaller piece has about ½ of its flange intact (in two segments across the core from each other). The lager piece is closer to ¾ intact. Nice pieces. Not cheap, but then, given the fact that the two “complete” buttons I have been offered in the past couple years (they were labeled “complete” but I never got to see how complete they really where) were $4500 for one and $5000 on the other has me thinking that these are actually not unreasonably priced.
a) 3.12g button. ½ flange intact – 20mm x 15mm x 9mm - $700
b) 5.69g button. ¾ flange intact – 23mm x 20mm x 12mm - $1100
SAN ANGELO, Texas: Iron. Medium octahedrite (IIIAB). Found 1897. Tkw = 88kg.
This is yet another piece I got in Tucson and then forgot about. I re-discovered this one with some Sericho individuals I needed to cut in half for Denver. I had set it aside as it had a thin skin of rust browning over substantial parts of it (it had been in a humid climate and didn’t look to have a protective coating of any kind on it) so I set it aside in the pile of “needs work” things (that pile can get pretty big at times). I went ahead and simply cleaned the rust off (with the rust removal kit I got from Bill Mason years ago). I thought about sanding the thing down, re-etching and such but decided to leave this as is as much as possible. Part of this is because I, frankly, suck at etching and part of it is that this does look to be something of a historic specimen at some levels. This has an old (really old) label with it that shows it was once part of the Illinois State University collection. The guy I got it from had it and a few other more common things that they were parting with to get some fancier, rarer things for actual display for their collection. I can understand this. This piece likely just lived in a drawer in a back room there. This is certainly NOT a visually exciting piece. It is basically a square cut specimen (with one edge natural) and the etch does not show well (this is likely from one of the more heated/ shocked areas of the meteorite that was noted in research work done on it). Regardless, I suspect that this is a very hard to get meteorite. I can only recall ever having an ugly little bar with a bunch of holes drilled in it (iron research work in the early days generally used those drilling shavings from such holes) that was maybe 12 or 15 grams in my entire past. The notes on this (in Buchwald’s Iron Meteorites) say that Ward’s Scientific Establishment bought the bulk of the piece after it was found. The label that came with this says “Donor: Wards Nat’l Science Establ”.
123.0 gram part slice – 50mm x 47mm x 5mm - $1200.
SILVERTON, Texas: Ordinary chondrite (H4). Found 1938. Tkw = 14.16kg.
These are pieces that I did get fairly recently. Getting them brought back a lot of memories. This was one of my first “field recovery” meteorites (where I’d spend a couple weeks in an area, knocking on doors, handing out fliers, talking with people to see if they had plowed up any meteorites). The guy that had this was determined to keep this as a “family heirloom”. I ended up offering a pretty substantial amount of money for it in front of his wife at the end. He was still determined to keep it. It seems his wife had better ideas for the $ this thing would bring them. It was the next morning (like well before sunup morning) that he came to seek me out at the motel I told him I was staying at (“in case you change your mind, I’ll be at…”). Rather than do something nice like knock on the door (he did have the room number) he simply sat in his truck honking his horn (yeah, everyone else staying there got woken up too). He insisted on cash though (I usually gave a check as it does act as something of a “bill of sale” showing I DID pay for the thing. I have heard of some getting hit with legal actions after they bought a meteorite with cash only to have the original owner come after them later, claiming that they were never paid. I did NOT want to get into that position (so I ended up making him sign a full “bill of sale”). Unfortunately, it was Saturday morning. NO banks were open Saturday in the area. I had to go up to Amarillo to find an open bank (and take a big cash advance on my credit card) to make this work. Got that done, went home with the stone. Troubles started. Not legal, but research. I had to have this compared to every other meteorite of a similar type that was found within 15 miles of this one. Well, the most likely candidate was Silverton, Tx. The problem here was that the ONLY place that had a thin section that would allow this comparison to be done (to the satisfaction of the Nomenclature Committee anyway) was a place in Germany. I sent them an already made-up thin section of my (10.1kg) stone to make it “quick and easy”. Nope, it still took years to get that done. Yep, it turned out to match the piece that was found back in 1938. These two pieces came from Jim Schwade who got “them” from me back in February of 1991 (probably at the Tucson show that year). Each comes with one of his labels. However, while measuring things for this list I noticed that these two pieces actually fit together to form a much large part slice (there is still one cut edge – likely the piece I cut off of this, likely the center slice of the stone I got, for research work). I looked up Silverton in Jim’s collection catalog and, yes, there is (was, anyway) a 585g “part slice” listed for this meteorite there. It seems that it got dropped or such (broken in shipping?) at some point. The weights on the labels are very slightly higher than the weights of the pieces. This is because I sanded one side back to 220 grit so you can actually see some of the structure of this meteorite. Both sides were fairly highly polished. As such, they were very dark brown and did not show much of anything with the naked eye.
a) 250.2 gram slice – 130mm x 90mm x 7mm - $850
b) 331.3 gram part slice – 130mm x 120mm x 7mm - $1125
c) both pieces - $1700
WHITECOURT, Canada: Iron. Medium oct. (IIIAB). Found 1906. Tkw = 140.9kg.
This is a completely natural as found individual. Nothing has been done to it since it was found. It has a classic shrapnel shape to it. When I’d show Sikhote-Alin shrapnel pieces to people in the past I made it a point to tell them that this is NOT how a meteorite really looks. For the most part, it isn’t. BUT, once a crater is involved….. Now we have at least three different meteorites that look (almost exactly) like this (Sikhote-Alin, Gebel Kamil and Whitecourt). Enough so that it would be hard to sort them out from one another without the aid of scientific equipment. I got this piece in Tucson and kind of planned on keeping it for myself. I may still do that if it does not sell. Currently, I don’t think I have ANY meteorite specimen from Canada at the moment and it might be kind of interesting to have a display showing the 3 meteorites currently known meteorites that look so similar (yes, Henbury and/or Boxhole could qualify but they tend to be a lot smaller and not quite so obviously shrapnel shaped).
225.4g shrapnel fragment as found – 75mm x 45mm x 20mm - $1200
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Shipping:
Well, once again, the post office has increased prices (a lot). I knew about the increase in the basic “forever” stamps (and stupidly missed buying some before the cost went up in July) but did not see an increase in other shipping costs. That seems to have now come about. I mailed my first package (actually just a padded envelope with a very small item in my smallest jewelry box) since August 1st and it ran me over $7 for “ground advantage”!!! (it would have been around $15 for priority as they really penalize you if you do not have “standard packaging” with priority. Basically forcing you to use a flat-rate box or really get screwed on shipping rates). Speaking of flat-rate/ priority rates. It now looks like $12 is needed to send a small flat-rate box (yeah, I know. You can get it for more like $11 if you do all the work online and print the label yourself. However, I have been finding lately that that system has been having LOTS of problems lately and I am only able to do such less than half the times I try).
I have no idea on what changes have happened in overseas/ out of the country rates. I’ll have to custom quote those kind of shipments for now.
