[meteorite-list] Total Number of Meteorites?

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Dec 7 14:23:41 2005
Message-ID: <avcep197l8ul8t1qc6c6t3be4dhher3ifl_at_4ax.com>

On Wed, 7 Dec 2005 19:56:35 +0100, "Martin Altmann" <altmann_at_meteorite-martin.de> wrote:

>I'm not a philosopher,
>but both of your definitions mean to me correct definitions for price, not
>for value.
>

Value is what worth "the market" places in an item. As long as there are people willing to pay x
price, than that item has x value, but if people are willing to pay only x/5, then you can push the
x price as hard as you want, it will only have a value of x/5 if all people are only willing to pay
x/5. The fact that the PRICE to produce/recover item Y selling at price x is much higher than
people are willing to pay for x is unfortunate for the producer/recoverer but utterly irrelevant to
the value of Y.

Let's look at this example-- realizing the dream of generations of alchemists, you CAN turn lead
into gold. All you need is the right kind of particle accelerators. The problem is solved. It has
been done. http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalchemistry/a/aa050601a.htm But the only minor
problem is that it would take billions of dollars and hundreds of years (at least) to get a troy
ounce of manufactured gold to sell. But do you think that, after making that billion-dollar gram of
gold, someone's going to be willing to pay a billion dollars for it? Or would they pay only the
current price for any old gram of gold? The PRICE for that gram of gold may be billions, but the
VALUE is only $520ish (right now).

Just because something has a certain price to make/recover doesn't HAVE to mean that it will have
that much VALUE to the potential market. As long as there are people willing to pay thousands a
gram for planetary meteorites, then planetary meteorites will have a value of thousands of dollars a
gram. But if people stop being willing to pay thousands a gram for planetary meteorites, then the
value stops being thousands a gram, even if the recovery/seller's purchase price remains in the
thousands a gram.
Received on Wed 07 Dec 2005 02:29:06 PM PST