[meteorite-list] NWA meteorites, TO BE OR NOT TO BE?

From: Shawn Alan <photophlow_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:50:52 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <807186.11498.qm_at_web35405.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hello Martin and Listers,
?
Thank you Martin?for your post and the cheese bit. It got me to thinking and when I got out of the gym tonight,?I had to buy some?parmesan cheese. I love that stuff. I put it on everything, when I can afford it. But for?some reason, cheese in NYC seems over priced, lets hope this doesn't happen with meteorites :) cause I will go broke with collecting every meteorite out there........ Just kidding,?I have my select few meteorites that I collect, and from what I can tell, location, location, location plays a big role in the collecting side to the science side of meteorites.
?
Perfect example, The first Lunar meteorite discovered outside of Antarctica, Calcalong Creek from Australia, by Robert Haag. From what I have?read, a gram of that meteorite was selling for about?$40,000. And now the race is on for the first person to discover the first Lunar meteorite in the US. And Martin?you say location doesn't really matter, but it does, even on a scientific level.
?
Now I bet if a scientist didn't know where the meteorite came from it would be harder for them to analyze the stone because of contamination which they didn't know about from where the meteorite came from. Or when it comes to field work, when people are looking over the strewn field they can predict how big the meteorite was, what angle it came in at, because of the useful information collected by people in the field. These elements?are just as important in meterotic science as the meteorite its self.
?
Almahata Sitta is a great example of how the location of the meteorite was just as important as the meteorite. Almahata Sitta is made up of many different meteorite classifications. Now if scientists didn't have the ability to document the location of the meteorite fall?and just said "here are?some meteorites but we don't have the location cause that doesn't matter" I wonder where we would be at with the many discoveries with the Almahata Sitta meteorite and countless other meteroites??
?
Now you see how location can be the best for both worlds. I wonder why some institutions don't except NWA meteorites anymore to be?analyzed? Is that because they are from NWA and nothing more, or is it that there isn't any regulation of how they are collected, or is?that they cost too much money cause they are rare? I might have an idea why some institutions wont touch them but it really doesn't matter what I say but the fact of the matter is?location might be the factor or the lack there of of why some institutions don't touch NWA's.
?
Martin,?you made a good point about how people collect. Some collect for the history side?and others?collect from the science side. I collect with both?sides in mind. I think all the factors can play a great role in ones collection and how this collection can be of value?from a scientific side, to a collectors side.?I collect NWA's?all the way to historic falls. But at the end of the day I want to know where my meteorites came from. A?meteorite is a meteorite but what makes a meteorite more than a meteorite is the history behind the fall, where it came from,?and how that meteorite impacted science. But that one take, and?I collect with both sides in mind. ?????

Shawn Alan
IMCA1633
eBaystore
http://shop.ebay.com/photophlow/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p
4340







[meteorite-list] NWA meteorites, TO BE OR NOT TO BE?
Martin Altmann altmann at meteorite-martin.de
Tue Aug 31 20:59:56 EDT 2010

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Hi Shawn,

I meant it totally seriously. Even I handling daily meteorites, and probably
because of my simple mind, have to do such visualizations from time to time,
and I wanted to express only, that for many if not most collectors (incl.
researchers),it really doesn't matter that much,
whether a meteorite is found in Sahara, Antarctica, USA or Burundi.

The meteorites from Sahara and especially the NWA are, were and will have
been always the most important source of meteoritic material of all times.

As that collecting hobby is about meteorites, why one shouldn't collect them
too?

You know, meteorites can tell to the collectors two stories.
One story is their Earthly story.
Their story how they felt, who owned them before, sometimes some curious
circumstances how they were found or how they felt, who has parts of them,
in which museums are parts of them, in how many books was written something
about them, were some scientific recoveries made for the first time on
them... etc.
This story is interesting for the collector, who likes historic meteorites
or pedigree specimens most.

The other story is,
what they have to tell us about the worlds out there, the solar system, how
sun, planets, Earth, life has formed.
For this story there it isn't important whether the stone bears a name or a
NWA-number.
Those meteorites are interesting for collectors with a fascination more for
space, science, the material itself.

I'd say, from my experience most collectors collect both kinds of
meteorites.


You're 8 months around - meteorite collecting exist for 200 years now.
("old timers" - guess I am a kind of, 30 years ago I purchased my first
one).
When I was young, pretty and full of hopes, I had the permanent choice of
only 300 different meteorites/locations. Most of them very laborious to get
into the collection, most of them available and/or affordable only in
bogey-sizes. Those roadbed-style chondrites, which you as collector get now
from NWA-wonderland ad libitum, they came at my times from Texas, Kansas,
New Mexico.. and they had cost not 30 nor 50$ but 1000 or 2000$ a kg.


Go just 10 years back. Something like a howardite, which you find sometimes
here offered on the list or on ebay at 5$/g - the people had to pay 400$ a
gram for it. And you had from the rare types almost nothing to choose from.
Acapulcoite? You're choice was simple. Monument Draw or Acapulco. One 800$,
the other 1200$/g - and not 30$.

NWA enabled me, that today I can have in my cupboard the complete asteroid
belt, as far as it is known today.

All types of rocks, all types of asteroids.
And now I can choose, even within the different classes, (sometimes even
within the parent body!)
as rare as they might be.

Now I can afford it! And I can afford it in sizes, that I don't need any
longer a magnifier and a lot of fantasy to imagine, that the pinpoint of
speck really could be a piece of the meteorite, I only know from books.
I even can collect now meteorite types, which weren't known to exist before.
Yes, Shawn, I even can have in my collection a variety of different rocks
from Planet Mars!
And I don't have to sell home and hearth anymore for getting a
fingernail-sized piece of that in my hands, what the heroes of my childhood
Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins brought back from up there!
Now Jane & John and everyone can afford a small piece of Moon.

Indeed Shawn, when I was in Tucson, the kilogram of cheese (and I mean
cheese, that kind with taste) in the supermarket was more expensive than a
kilogram of space rocks on the show! Of course it is a perversion,
but also extremely fantastic, isn't it?

----------

That means NWA to me, that means NWA to many collectors.
To science they mean more, there the NWAs are of outstanding importance.

10 years NWA lasts now, that immense gain of meteoritic wealth, knowledge
and also passion for the collecting people.
If collectors and scientists don't care and that hysteria with that
laws-insanity continues,
it will take only 10 years more and the NWAs will fully have disappeared
again.
(And then, one of your questions will be obsolete, because then we all will
have to pay again the bitter and cruel prices for them like 10 and 20 years
ago.)

Best!
Martin





-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Shawn
Alan
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 1. September 2010 01:26
An: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Betreff: [meteorite-list] NWA meteorites, TO BE OR NOT TO BE?

Hi Martin and Listers,

Wow I want what ever your taking and so does my fingers. Any whos thank you
for sharing your thoughts Martin and telling me I can answer some of my
questions myself.

WOW I forgot that the List was a place to talk about meteorites and ask
questions. My bad, I must be at the wrong Meteorite List.... I bet I got
phished. Dang, I need a new virus protection program :)~

Back to NWA meteorites, I find it interesting that there isn't much write
ups about them. So from a person that has only been around..... mmmmmm lets
say 8 months, I think it was a good time to say something about this topic
and see what some of the old timers thought about NWA meteorites.

And lastly I hope a meteorite doesn't care where it lands, but from a
collectors stand point, we do care, and from a science stand point, they
care as well, cause if they didn't then I wouldn't see why the need for
strewn fields or coordinates of where the meteorites are recovered from.

Shawn Alan
IMCA1633
eBaystore
http://shop.ebay.com/photophlow/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p
4340





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Received on Wed 01 Sep 2010 01:50:52 AM PDT