[meteorite-list] Meteorite Found in California?

From: David Freeman <dfreeman_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Aug 3 14:26:40 2004
Message-ID: <410FCA4A.8080505_at_fascination.com>

Dear Ron, Michael, List;
I have two meteorites on ebay for sale.....wonder who has the other 16
for sale?
Some one must have forgotten some zero's.
Dave F.

Ron Baalke wrote:

>
>http://www.dailybreeze.com/content/news/3194068.html
>
>Meteor, right?
>By Josh Grossberg
>Daily Breeze (Torrance, California)
>July 22, 2004
>
>It traveled for millions of years across the vast emptiness of space,
>entered the Earth's atmosphere at speeds 50 times faster than a bullet
>and could be worth up to $20,000.
>
>Either that or it's just a rock.
>
>All the Patel brothers know is that they heard an odd noise in the
>middle of the night and the next morning, there was a strange mineral
>formation in the parking lot of their Redondo Beach inn, named,
>appropriately enough, the Starlite Motel.
>
>Now, after doing some research on the Internet, they're fairly certain
>the golf-ball-sized, pock-marked object with copper specks is a visitor
>from outer space.
>
>"I was sweeping and I saw it," Dinesh Patel said. "At first I thought it
>was a rock, and was going to put it in the trash. But it was too heavy."
>
>The brothers were sound asleep early Tuesday at their hotel on Pacific
>Coast Highway when they were both startled awake by a loud noise. Narish
>Patel described it as a "zzzzz" sound, while Dinesh Patel said it
>resembled a "car squeaking against a wall." Apparently nobody else heard
>it, or at least, they didn't contact the Redondo Beach police, which
>received no calls, Sgt. Phil Keenan said.
>
>It could take months of testing to determine exactly what the brothers
>found. But after looking at a photograph of their prize, two meteorite
>experts said it is certainly possible that they found what they think
>they found.
>
>"I can't rule it out," said meteorite dealer Michael Blood.
>
>Blood said that if it's real, the find would be especially rare because
>the brothers heard and found the meteorite where it landed, something
>that has happened only a few thousand times in history.
>
>Worth thousands -- maybe
>
>And if it came from the moon or Mars, the Patels would really have hit
>the celestial jackpot.
>
>"If it's lunar or martian, it could be worth a couple thousand dollars a
>gram," Blood said of the rock that weighs about 20 grams. "But the
>greatest likelihood is it's common chondrite."
>
>In which case, the entire stone would be worth maybe a couple hundred bucks.
>
>On Wednesday afternoon, the Internet site eBay had 18 purported
>meteorites for sale, ranging in price from $6.99 to $1,000.
>
>Who would spend so much on so little? Very few people, it turns out.
>
>"It's a very intense industry that's very small," Blood said. "My
>estimate is there are 3,000 to 6,000 collectors in the world. Maybe much
>less."
>
>Blood said that Meteorite Magazine, the bible of the field, has a
>circulation of about 1,000.
>
>The allure of meteorites -- which are meteors that reach the Earth
>intact -- is their otherworldliness.
>
>"There's nothing else you can put in your hand and look at that's from
>out of the world," Blood said. "They come from countless millions of
>miles away. I've spent hundreds of hours looking for them and found only
>one. These things are hard to come by."
>
>Alan Rubin, a research geochemist at the Institute of Geophysics and
>Planetary Physics at UCLA, was less optimistic than Blood.
>
>"It doesn't look very promising," said Rubin, who earned a Ph.D.
>studying meteors. "If it's a meteorite, it's very unusual."
>
>Tests will offer the answer
>
>Still, he said, tests would need to be conducted to be sure.
>
>"The texture is unlike any meteorite I've seen, but there's always a
>chance," he said. "I can't rule it out."
>
>If the find turns out to be something common, it wouldn't be the first
>time someone saw space stuff on the ground.
>
>"I had a woman drive hundreds of miles and show up in my driveway with a
>truck full of rocks," Blood said. "They hear that a lunar meteorite
>sells for $1,000 a gram and then they find a rock and think they're rich."
>
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Received on Tue 03 Aug 2004 01:24:26 PM PDT