[meteorite-list] Ensisheim And St Marie Report

From: dean bessey <deanbessey_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 12:12:57 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <209653.2647.qm_at_web56108.mail.re3.yahoo.com>

Well, I am a bit late and weeks after the shows and
probably nobody cares about them anymore but I just
got back so I will tell everybody my thoughts on the
shows and my travels in case anybody is still
interested. I just got home after the vacation. I
brought my baby with me and my parents came from
Canada so we all enjoyed the shows together and we
vacationed in the Rhine between shows and in spain
afterwards. Had a great vacation and put over 8000km
on the rental car (Which cost us a fortune in gas - us
guys from canada and the USA who are spoiled with
cheap gas goes into shock at the gas pump when we go
to Europe). For those travelling in France with Babies
you want to bring them into the station with you as
the Total and Carrefour gas stations often give you a
really cool baby pack for free which contains things
like diapers, toys, biscuts, cd's, games, coupons ect.
(I drove back from Spain to Amsterdam with just myself
and my baby who got bored in the back seat by herself
so we got to met every gas station attendent between
santiago de Compestela and Amsterdam).
Anyway, I am boring everybody now so on to the shows.
A new modern hotel in Ensisheim two minutes from the
show venue with dozens of rooms now solves the room
crises for people who go. Free WiFi makes life easy
(Although they seemed to be using some sort of nanny
software as it was very hard to log on to yahoo mail -
I will complain to them about that before I go again.)
The local kids has drawings relating to meteorites in
the spiral staircase which has a nice effect but it
wasnt as numerous or impressive as two years ago.
Ensisheim keeps getting better. And the wine was stil
great and they got rid of that godawful meteor beer
this year. The promoter continues to do a great job
with a great meal and events to go along with the ever
increasing importance of the meteorite show itself.
Its a pleasant getogether even if their were not lots
of meteorites for sale. However, it has grown to be
more than an early fun stop on the way to St Marie. In
fact most of the meteorite dealers who matter
(Including moroccan ones) were in Ensisheim in
addition to St Marie and anybody who never went to
Ensisheim was getting piked over stuff in St Marie as
it was mostly unsold ensisheim stuff that was being
offered in St Marie.
As with the past few years there are fewer and fewer
meteorites. There wasnt much by way of better
material. There was a few grams of the current
shergotite that is floating around morocco for sale
(Selling well at 300 euros a gram). I am told that
there is around a kilo found and I expected a lot to
be offered but there wasnt much (The fact that I was
walking around with a third of the entire find sort of
reduced supply somewhat). And occasional overpriced
achondrite was offered for sale but nothing of any
large quantity. Mohammad still had his 3 kilo CV3 on
Hans Kosers table - Who as usual had lots of campos
and a nice new South American Iron. Common NWA stuff
was in short supply compared to a few years ago. A
couple boxes of small size NWA869 was there at 40 Euro
cents but not much. I continue to believe that the
desert is drying up as if the shortage of the past
couple years was due to the borders being tightened
the locals would have figured out a way to get around
it by now. If the americans and their billions of
dollars of hi tech security cant stop millions of
mexicans from getting across the boarder then a few
rag tag almost unpaid cops is not going to stop desert
rocks from crossing boarders. I think the fun is
getting over in NWA.
There wasnt much by way of Oman meteorites either and
Sikhote Alin was also in short supply and what was
there was mostly scrapnel. Erich Haiderer had some
really nice small sikhote alins and I found a 17 gram
inch long one that was half covered in dozens of
tightly packed flow lines. I left it saturday but
sunday it was still there so they werent being piked
over much.
In the lots of them catagory Moldavites were abundant
this year. And lots of nice ones. They were slowing
down a couple years ago and the main sellers were
saying they were hard to find but new supplies much
have been found as there were lots. Also in the
catagory of abundant supply was libyan desert glass. I
dont really want to say truck loads but bucket fulls
anyway. In st marie one guy had a 8 foot table with a
barrier to hold them on piled up a foot or more high
with the stuff. Libyan desert glass is certainly not
in short supply thats for sure.
I was expecting huge quantities of the EL fossil
meteorite but there was nothing remorely close to what
I was expecting. You would never know that there was
at least 3 tons of it from what was available at the
shows. Maybe savvy buyers have it all bought up. Not
sure on that one.
St Marie of course also had its share of fossils and
minerals and as usual was an extremily easy place to
buy stuff and make lots of money selling it on ebay.
Dinosaur teeth was almost not available this year and
the stone artifacts was much fewer than previous years
also. Moroccan fossil marble and trilobites (Which
will never run out) were also available in large
quantity but there wasnt the mountains of cheap poorly
prepped stuff like you saw at shows 3 or 4 years ago.
The trilobites that were there were better preped,
more expensive and there were very few fake ones
around. I think this is due to the moroccans trying to
improve their reputation and put more effort into
getting long term customers rather than one off's like
they are used to with tourists. Most fossil dealers
had at least a few meteorites.
All in all it was a great show and one of the better
vacations that I have had. Everything went really
well.
I wont bother with many pictures as you have already
seen them all so here is some that shows my vacation.
Me and Baby with ensisheim meteorite
http://www.meteoriteshop.com/temp/ens07a.jpg
Me and baby in the new hotel in ensisheim
http://www.meteoriteshop.com/temp/ens07b.jpg
Me, baby and harald in a bar in ensisheim
http://www.meteoriteshop.com/temp/ens07c.jpg
Me and baby in santiago de compestella spain
http://www.meteoriteshop.com/temp/ens07d.jpg
Baby at Rhine castle
http://www.meteoriteshop.com/temp/ens07e.jpg
Grandad and baby in one of the wineries near the St
Marie show
http://www.meteoriteshop.com/temp/ens07f.jpg
Nan and baby along the Rhine
http://www.meteoriteshop.com/temp/ens07g.jpg
Me and baby in a castle
http://www.meteoriteshop.com/temp/ens07h.jpg
I will miss munich this year (And probably next
winters Tucson again to but tucson is to far of to
plan yet) so most likely I wont see many of you in
person again for a year or two but I will still be
around and there should be anough meteorites to keep
going for a couple years yet anyway
Cheers
DEAN















 
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Received on Sun 08 Jul 2007 03:12:57 PM PDT