[meteorite-list] Monacensia - Munich 2006

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Nov 6 21:23:28 2006
Message-ID: <03bb01c70213$65a959a0$4f41fea9_at_name86d88d87e2>

Griassdi list!

The Munich show is over, the caravan moves on and, I guess, most who
attended, agree on the fair having been a highlight of the meteoritical
year.

This year I was bound to our booth, so that I couldn't be on my beat as
usually, thus I'm able to tell only my very incomplete impressions and will
leave it to others to report more comprehensively here on the list.

Well, as always, it was a great meeting of old and new faces and stones,
stones, irons and stones.
Where to start - perhaps with some general trends.

The vanishing of desert material accelerated again. The Moroccan tables were
almost empty, often one could find not more than five or six nicer
chondrites there. Only at a few specialized Moroccan dealers a little more
was exhibited. Tiny weathered chondrites and a few well crusted ones, like
e.g. at Mohammed Sbai.
Achondrites, rare types, oriented ones? Almost nil return!
Some Moroccans even switched to little Sikhote-Alins.
So again Dean Bessey with his bulk amount was the King among Queens
and only Senior&Junior Hmani and Ahmed Pani presented the high-end of the
Maghreb finds.

At Hmani's stall we met first Mike Farmer and Jim Strope, Jim was busy in
rolling around a huge plastic ton, the contents must have been heavy as it
should be to expect from Jim. Mike brought along some slices of his amazing
new iron with the greenish silicates and sold them all, later he showed us
an enormous chunk of a Moon-look-alike.

And here we are at the irons:
Trends:
Gibeon is definitely over.
Even at the Sprichs there were only marginal cuts left.
Sikhote is over. The amounts available were ridiculous to those only 2 or 3
years ago.
Brahin was rare on the show too.

The new Gibeon is called "Muonionalusta"!
Very heavy whackers were available at Hans Koser's place beside his
well-known Campos (I ask myself, whether Hans did move during the last 5
years more Campos than the official tkw??),
as well as at a table of a moldavite dealer, whose name I always forget,
help! There a heart-shaped fullslice I remember, which had a troilite vein
running through - it was a broken heart.

Mr.Muonionalusta himself - Thomas ?sterberg
(http://www.muonionalustameteorites.com/)
was visiting the show too!
Also from Scandinavia Morten and the Moss-crew one could met.

Inexpensive Seymchan was available at a fossils dealer. Thick cuts and
slices for tinkerers.
What for an aestethic potential inheres in Seymchan, there the proof could
be viewed at the Egers. Huuuge highly polished slices, some longer than 50cm
and all only 4mm thin, where mounted in black masks illuminated from behind.
Two had a fine olivine-free vein running through. Truely superb. Uwe Eger is
a master of his art.

A last larger Gibeon, dish-shaped and the only remarkable large and
regmaglypted Sikhote, leaping to my eye on the show, were exhibited on the
much-loved cosmic chaos tables of Erich Haiderer.
Erich's booth is always a mixture between a flea-market table and a candy
shop. The collector has to work to find the astonishing and rare types and
specimens between the more common stuff, he has to dig and to grub, but
then, if his treasure hunt was successful, he always will be rewarded for
his work, with an excellently fair price.

Badly missed this year was the display of the French Mahatma Alain Carion,
Sigh - decades ago little Martin was acquiring meteorites from him almost
every year on the Munich show

and of course we all missed Norbert&Heike Kammel's goodies from Down-Under!

Only a single Australian showed up, with suitable Camel Dongas and very good
Millbillillies, but with that price level he asked it would have been
cheaper to invite Norbert to Munich at collector's costs!

Bruno&Carine's place I missed twice, I guess because I overlooked it, as
they displayed a lot of fossils and Chinese china (I mean porcelain),
But collectors reported me, that they had a similar assortment like on the
fairs before, their exquisite exotics and some historic falls.

The Eislers were there, had some good "names", additionally Miles and
translucent Imilac slices.
Prokopec I saw running around, but not his table, though he filled his show
case with his lunaites, I heard.
A lot of moldavites were available on the show, here as the best example
I'll only mention our neighbour Thomas Dehner, with a huge variety of
shapes, qualities - from grab-ware to museum pieces and of course his
excellent assortment of moldavite jewellery.

And of course the Russian hunter crew sent a delegation with always smiling
Dima and the more corpulent Serge (for not mixing up with the slim Serge,
whome we missed again on the show). They offered a lot of CR3-slices and we
were often asked on our stall: Did you see the Dho 007s at the Russians?
They do have complete little individuals and also Dho 700 and soooo cheap!
Will you buy some too?

I heard furthermore, that Chladni's Heirs had this year their Munich
premiere....
We confined our assortment to historic falls, some rare or unusual irons and
some desert highlights (for instance the world's freshest R after Rumuruti
itself).
We exhibited our new lunaite, the granulitic NWA 4483, and additionally a
fullslice of another new lunaite, but here we ask for your patience until we
will introduce it here (seems to be an unpaired one).
But now I have to stop, before the listees will complain about hidden ads.
Only one remark: The new little Moon boxes were a sucess, they were bought
by the dozens to be carried to resale to almost all continents and went so
fast, that we were tempted to pull out the hammer to craft new ones under
the table.
(The name contest winner we will announce later this week, we need a good
cap of sleep before..).
Well - a detailed review about our stall we leave to others..

In my opinion the best stall this year, of course influenced by my
preference for old falls and finds, was that one of the Karls and Vassiliev.
Their superthin fullslices of Moon and Mars are world-renowned,
and take the search engine form your meteoritical database, refine the
search with the period from 1750-1850, enter falls - and to my best
knowledge, I don't know any other offerors, who have so many of those for
sale and we talk not about crumbs and specks, but about perfect thin slices,
and not so seldom about fullslices often at such prices, that we couldn't
resist to buy a specimen.
They brought along a true Pr?t-?-Porter-Museum!!

Time to send some thanks!
Franceso Moser swapped his shadow on shows, Mauro, against his enchanting
girlfriend Manuela, Francesco a good trade! They brought us some cake
and also iron collector Andreas Koppelt served us a hearty meal,
so that we could carry on in developing bellies worthy for true meteorite
dealers.

My special and cordial thanks are going to meteorite jeweller Slawomir
Derecki:
he crafted a wonderful gold necklace with a pendant containing a piece of
Moon and handed it over to me, for selling it at auction for helping the
Romanian children - I'm looking forward to this auction and I'm hoping, that
many of you will participate.

And here we express also our apologies, that because of having a stall, we
often found not time to discuss and to talk with all collectors and friends
as it should have been.

The evening at Fliegerbr?u was well frequented.
Sorry for the bad organisation. Only 20 people announced, that they'll join,
so I ordered places for 40, and finally 60 came.
The staff of the restaurant obviously was overextended and as the food there
isn't such fine and because of the experience from the last year, I'll take
care for finding a better place for the next year.

AND IT WOULD BE VERY KIND, if next year those, who left without paying,
would pay. At the end they roughly bilked 300$.
Our thanks to:
Razvan Andrei, Svend Buhl, Norbert Classen, Manfred Dannapfel, Mirko & Tina
Graul, Marc Jost, Peter Marmet and...gosh, I hope I remembered all,
who helped us to cover that sum.


Those were my short impressions, now I want to read more reports here and
especially I want to see more photos!

See you all next year, but before hopefully in Tucson!

Martin, Stefan & Andi
>From Chladni's Heirs!
Received on Mon 06 Nov 2006 09:21:11 PM PST