[meteorite-list] New Nevada Meteorite on Ebay

From: Robert Verish <bolidechaser_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Jul 12 14:14:45 2004
Message-ID: <20040712180842.5240.qmail_at_web51705.mail.yahoo.com>

If now one else will speak up, I guess I'll have to
say it...

I find this whole Nevada-meteor-wrong-auction-thing as
being potentially very embarrassing to the meteorite
community.

This problem-auction was first brought up on the
IMCA-List, but nothing more was said about it.
Nothing more was mentioned about how the seller of
this auction of this untested, misidentified material
was actually an IMCA member! Nothing more was posted
about how assistance should be lent to the seller in
this matter before any bigger problems arise.

Now there's a discussion on this List, but instead,
the issue is centered on "trying to determine the ID"
of this rock that is clearly a desert varnished iron
ore. But there's a bigger problem here. The seller
isn't some inexperienced rockhound/prospector trying
to sell on eBay some iron ore that he has confused
with being a meteorite. The seller is ONE OF US!

The problem is that the entire meteorite community can
suffer a black-eye over an incident like this. How
this problem gets handled will be crucial to the
reputation of the IMCA, if not all collectors in
general.

There are a number of questions that still need to be
answered, and some of you have already been trying to
get those answers. But I'm not going to raise those
questions here on this List. I feel these questions
should be raised and discussed on the IMCA-List, where
it was first raised, and where it properly belongs.

Bob V.
Received on Mon 12 Jul 2004 02:08:42 PM PDT