[meteorite-list] FW: CALI COLOMBIA HOUSE SMASHER> AssortedSizes & Prices!

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:12:08 +0200
Message-ID: <006201c7dce2$640ad6a0$177f2a59_at_name86d88d87e2>

Hi Darryl, list

>The foregoing notwithstanding, what is it about Cali that makes it
>worth $4000/g?

That is easily answered: Because it is a METEORITE.

Now, like so often, we are in a pricing debate.

> Watch out below for a BUY recommendation in a column on Meteorite Market
>Trends.

I wish, that in such a column an author would at least once look beyond our
backyards.

Our field of collection comprises the rarest matter on Earth.
Make the stats. ca. 600 metric tons of meteorites all in all.
"Dark figure" to be found at the few mass iron finds.
90% of the total mass of meteorites covered by the Twenty largest iron
meteorites. 2 small railway cars classified and unclassified stones found in
20 years hunting in the hot deserts. Two thirds of finds from Antarctica,
most of the historical finds and falls in institutional collections.

Remember Klondyke, McDuck. Until today 250 times more gold was mined and dug
than meteorites were found. What costs an ounce of gold and what costs an
ounce of NWAxxxx unclassified H5, W3.
We have more than 600 tons of diamonds suitable for a brilliant cut. We have
40kg of Moon. What does an average quality 5 carat diamond cost and what
1gram of Moon?

We all must be happy! There is no collectible matter, nothing, what a
private person can own, that is so exclusive like a meteorite.
BUT (!) the hobby itself is not "exclusive" at all, in the words literal
meaning.

At present everyone has access to meteorites. Daily we see meteorites going
at 3-10cents a gram, so that even children from their pocket money could
afford the stuff.

Please jump into your next jeweller's shop. Ask for the prices of the pieces
there, of the precious stones, buy an opal. Play with the golden ritzy
watches and other bulk articles.

Take at hand catalogues for the stamp collectors, numismatists, baseball
card traders.

Take a seat in the auctions houses and observe the results for fine art,
modern art, antiques, old books, vintage cars.

Let you send the quotations of French Truffles, whereof each year 50 tons
are harvested and which are sold at Park-Forest- or Howardite-prices (HEDs
we have altogether from 200 years 1-2 tons).

And finally note which volumes are moved and which prices are paid on the
mineral shows for higher class mineral specimens, dino-skulls and other old
dead creepy-crawlies....

Meteorites are all much more rare than that mentioned stuff.
But they can be bought, where people buy their DVDs, their socks ect.
and often enough the potential buyer has even to balance, whether he'll let
pass a specimen, because the shipping costs would account for a to high
percentage of the overall price.

So can't we see, in what for a comfortable, even paradisiac situation we are
as collectors? Isn't it moot to discuss, whether a stone should cost 1$ or
100$ per gram?
Shouldn't we be instead pleased as a Punch, that so few people on Earth like
to collect meteorites and that neither the institutional research has at
present a greater interest in meteorites;
that the collectors community is so small and growing so slow, that the
desert rush, although it comprised only a few tons, wasn't immediately
absorbed, so that John Doe hasn't to be a millionaire to assemble a
representative collection of the rarest matter on Earth?

Thus, what shall we debate about prices? I mean and you and me know, that a
good part of the collectorship is aware of these circumstances and that they
silently enjoy the theoretically absurd price level of the recent years and
know exactly, that the stones, they are buying now, they won't get in their
lives again at so affordable prices.

Now perhaps the big simplifiers will jump on the thread (as so often)
rattling off their Mantra: supply & demand, supply & demand...
But let's oppose a similar simple thought:
 If the above mentioned total masses of meteorites wouldn't be true and if
so many meteorites are offered at "exaggerated" prices...then the "meteorite
market" would be a financially very rewarding biz, right?
So I ask now: Where are then the hosts of fulltime meteorite dealers?
Shouldn't then the dealer's list have not 100 entries, whereof many are
collector-dealers, hobby sellers, professional dealers, who have meteorites
as one assortment among others - shouldn't be found then there a thousand or
more dealers?

In almost each village, you'll find an antiques shop.
In each small township, you have a jeweller.
In each mid-size town, you have an art shop.
In each big city you have a rock and fossils shop.
In each metropolis, you have a meteo... oooops!

Hands up! Who from you dealers runs a physical, a "real" meteorite retail
store?
I know, that Carion has a small shop in Paris, selling minerals and
meteorites.
Can someone supply me with the addresses of the meteorite shops in
Washington, London, Rio, Tokyo, Mexico City, Moscow?

Well, exclusive is only the circle of meteorite collectors. Everyone knows
everyone, a cosy affair and if a new face appears on a show or on the list
it is a true event.
  
(And for a dealer it would be ways more attractive to catch a single
sturgeon, selling the caviar than to discover the 49th new lunaite.)


Other thing:
If e.g. your sink is blocked and you call a plumber, then he will bill you
for the call out fees or travel costs (don't know the right English word)
and the hours of work.
I guess, that should be natural in the meteorite market too?

Hmmm, can one of the Nevada or California hunters give us a hint please,
what their travel costs are and how many grams they are finding per hour on
average? They must find a lot, if Franconia sells at 1 buck per gram...

Last and funny thing:

"Some of you may recall when the Moon first came out of the Sahara and
was selling for $25,000/gram, I suggested on this very list that to
pay such a sum would be folly and soon prove insane."

Well, some will recall the times when Moon came out at 200,000$....
(also not that bad, NASA paid 350,000$/g. And 30 years of Antarctic hunts
cost also a lot, so I fear that the 10 pounds found there would end up also
with a 5-digit-number per gram).

But the really funny thing and I guess, some dealers can confirm that
phenomenon, is the reaction, you often will get, if you are offering Moon
beyond the backyard of the meteorite circle to people, who have no clues
about meteorites.

Namely, if you tell them, that there are only 40kgs of lunar meteorites on
Earth, that the 380kgs Apollo rocks are a big no-no, that there are (would
have to sum up) 80 kgs or so of Mars, if you tell them the costs for the
Apollo-missions, the Luna-probes, the costs for Hayabusa or a
sample-return-mission from Mars, the amounts of gold and diamonds mined so
far...

...then you'll really get difficulties with the credibility, when you are
offering then a piece of Moon at 1000$ or 2000$ per gram or a Mars at 300 or
800$/g.
Because it is simply not plausible for them, that something so incredible
rare can be so cheap and they will come to the conclusion, that the material
must be a fake and the offer a fair swindle.

You will observe it likewise with those people buying and taking part in the
markets told above, usually spending larger sums than the average meteorite
collectors,
as well as at the lower end. If you run a meteoritical website, always here
and there will contact you laypeople asking: I won a piece of Mars or Moon
on ebay at 20 or 50 bucks, can that really be true??
(and you might observe it with our lunar cases that often, seen the weight,
when laypeople or collectors from other fields are bidding on them and they
start at zero, that in their perception the material has to be more valuable
then the actual price paid on the meteorite-collectors-market).

So perhaps we were all unfair some days ago, and Sssteve was right to offer
his rotten desert H5 at 8$/g.... :-)


Thus I guess, that price discussions are to a certain degree not
comprehensible. Whether the "hammers" suddenly should cost 10 times more
than a year ago, that a Campo should cost 50/kg and not 200/kg.
That someone sold something 3 times more expensive than another. That a new
superb fall like Bassikonou could be to expensive with 4$/g. And so on. Who
cares given the prices meteorite would bring, if meteorite collecting would
be a normal collection field like all other too?

Those, who think, that something is to expensive - nobody can force them to
buy: Let it be!
The other collectors are glad and happy with the price levels of our days,
and on the long run, well, most know what will happen.....

My conclusions is, that each of the Three Michaels could paint also
20,000$/g on Cali and nobody of good reason could complain.

Happy Sunday with 100 perseids!
Martin






-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Darryl
Pitt
Gesendet: Sonntag, 12. August 2007 03:07
An: Meteorite List
Betreff: Re: [meteorite-list] FW: CALI COLOMBIA HOUSE SMASHER> AssortedSizes
& Prices!



I've long thought that Mike Farmer is The Man. What Mike has
accomplished and continues to accomplish is amazing; he is without peer.

The foregoing notwithstanding, what is it about Cali that makes it
worth $4000/g? Is it because it fell in an extremely rough area and
there is a couple hundred grams---of one of the stones? Or is it
because it went through a roof---even though more than one hundred
roofs have been penetrated by cosmic debris? What happens when Mike,
and others who emulate Mike, soon acquire another new common
chondrite that goes through a roof in a similarly rough
neighborhood? Is that worth $4000/g as well? More than 10x the
value of some Martian meteorites? And what if it's a lower-class
roof in Nogales---what's that worth? (And I don't know if many of
you know this, but Peekskill---it's the Wild West up there.)

Some of you may recall when the Moon first came out of the Sahara and
was selling for $25,000/gram, I suggested on this very list that to
pay such a sum would be folly and soon prove insane. Cali has now
entered the realm of the lunar-tics.

Watch out below for a BUY recommendation in a column on Meteorite
Market Trends.

dp
Received on Sun 12 Aug 2007 09:12:08 AM PDT