[meteorite-list] Yes, I am home. Tucson Observation

From: MeteorHntr at aol.com <MeteorHntr_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:40:41 EST
Message-ID: <c72.4a64ac64.36cde869_at_aol.com>

Hello List,

In reply to Anne's post, where she stated:

"One of the Show organizers even told me that this "has to be the busiest
room in the whole Show!!!"

I want to confirm that not only did Anne and Geoff's room have a lot of foot
traffic (some of which even resulted in some sales) it seemed this year's
show was good, if not very good, for many of the other meteorite dealers in
attendance. It was hard to find any meteorite dealer who was complaining. In
comparison, attendance in general at the Inn Suites seemed off by at least 50%
from earlier years maybe even more. There were even available parking
spaces on the weekends, every time I needed to park. Not surprisingly, most all
of the other non-meteorite dealers that I talked with indicated this was a bad
show for them, many of which closed up early and headed out before the show
was over. (I think the gold nugget sellers probably are the other exception
that had a good year).

It is encouraging that it seems that Meteorites are somewhat bucking the
downward trend the rest of the economy seems to be experiencing right now.

While some of the established meteorite collectors are buying less now than
in previous years, it seems that the new collectors coming into the market
are picking up most of that slack.

Of course it would be nice if the economy was booming for everyone else too,
as that would only help more so with meteorite sales. It will be
interesting to see next year at Tucson, how many dealers of other items do not return
to Tucson, and also to see how many new meteorite dealers may take their
place. We might see a lot of dealers of other items add a few meteorites to their
inventory just so they can put up a "Meteorites Inside" sign outside of
their show room next year to boost both traffic and sales!

The attendance of our Meteor Mayhem Birthday Bash was about the same as last
year, as it seemed was the case with the Auction. And so that is a good
sign that the meteorite collectors were out in force in spite of the economic
storms.

Speaking of the auction, without specific numbers to back me up, it seemed
that the items under a few hundred dollars did quite well, and the higher
priced items, like in previous years, went for bargain prices. The big
difference it seemed was that there were fewer big ticket items in the auction this
year. I am sure Michael Blood will have a more thorough review of this in his
upcoming issue of Meteorite Trends.

While it is against the S.E.C. and F.T.C. laws to represent (or even
mention) meteorites as "investments" rather than "collectibles," it will be very
interesting to see if the value of these wonderful "collectibles" will continue
to swim up-stream against the economic current. Heck, if they would just
hold their commercial values, I would be very happy!

One dealer told me that there is a significant number of people in Europe
that are divesting themselves of paper money and stocks, and are looking to buy
anything physical to put their money into. I guess there are some people
that think that inflation might be coming and that owning physical things that
could go up in value (at least at the same rate of inflation) could be smart
thing to do. Small and valuable antiquities seem to be a favorite of world
wide buyers, and meteorites seem to be gaining in popularity too.

I have always said that the only reason there are not 100,000 meteorite
collectors is because not enough people have been exposed to the hobby yet. We
only need a tiny fraction of 1% of the people exposed to how cool meteorites
are to collect, and we should see the numbers of our ranks rise significantly
over time.

Events like the Canadian fall being reported, with Canadian officials going
on record saying that the government might pay $30 per gram for anything
found, only helps to fuel interest.

And whether there are actually MORE meteorite falls in the last few months,
or just that newspapers now know that meteorite stories attract readers, so
more fireball reports now all of a sudden qualify as "news," in either case,
the extra exposure only helps.

When was the last time a fireball made it into the New York Times?

As a hunter/dealer, I like these trends.

I guess only time will tell how it all pans out. But it seems that this
year's Tucson Show is a great sign of what might be coming in our future.

Steve #1




In a message dated 2/18/2009 3:03:48 P.M. Central Standard Time,
Impactika at aol.com writes:
Hello everybody,

Yes, I made it home yesterday late afternoon.
My car is now unloaded, and I am going thru a few hundreds emails I really
did not have time to read during the Show. If you are trying to get hold of
me,
please be patient for another day or two, and I will get right back to you.
 
(please no phone calls just right now; somehow I managed to catch a
head-cold
and lose my voice somewhere between Tucson and Denver.)

Thank you to all of you who dropped by room 230 in the InnSuites, it was
great seeing all of you even if the conversations sometimes had to be a bit
short.
One of the Show organizers even told me that this "has to be the busiest
room
in the whole Show!!!"

Again, thanks everybody. And if you didn't make it to Tucson this year, the
next one is less than a year away!

Anne M. Black
http://www.impactika.com/
IMPACTIKA at aol.com
Vice-President, I.M.C.A. Inc.
http://www.imca.cc/

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Received on Wed 18 Feb 2009 05:40:41 PM PST