|
From those, who are present on the web, but not on the
dealers list, I want to mention the Egers with nice stuff and of course Siggi
Haberer and friends with their excellent documented and classified desert finds
– CK4 monster, howardite, eucrite, I really don’t know, why their table attracts
not more attention, he’s known as one of the most friendly persons in this
business and when you’re not taller than 4 feets, he will give you a sample for
free. Another well-reputated and –known dealer from Germany is
Mr.Kümmel (good opportunity to get german meteorites). Pani from Vienna I remember with a most
colourfull breccia and nice veined fresh H6-NWA. Tomelleri from Italy with a
very small but exquisite assortement.
If I don’t mix it up, Mr.Spich comes in my mind (Gibeon&Korra
Korrabes, where is all the Gibeon gone?? Until 3-4 years before tons of Gibeon
each year, now nearly nothing left), mainly because he left the old prices on
his boxes, but first it was DEM, then the next year EURO, which means a doubled
price. Furthermore there are many mineral dealers, who have beside their mineral
specimens a few meteorites, in general the most common irons as Campo, Canyon,
Nantan, Sikhote – from those dealers only the bulk dealers are remarkable, who
sell large Nantans and Campos in pieces of several kg at fine
prices. Some special “enthusiasts” are also to be found. Just
drill a hole in a Sikhote and sell it as jewelery for 5Euro/g… Some were selling
Nantan splinters, which they threw in acid before at incredible 3-6/Euro,
another one was to lazy to sandblast his Campos and sold ugly rusting chunks
with good success at 0,50/g. Now, before I’ll write about the Morroccains, I have to
list Mr.Hmani, because he was the single dealer from Morrocco on the show, who
was spezialized only in meteorites. He had some classified achondrites and the
nicest show pieces at his table were large etched slices of the newest iron
finds from Sahara. There are always dozens of morroccain dealers and on
every second table there is between the other uniform stuff of shark teeth,
neolithic tools and trilobite pizzas a box with unclassified meteorites. Some
prejudices, which seems to be true: First all morroccain dealers love to haggle
and will feel it as personal insult, if you pay more than half of the price,
they started with. Second they are all cousins or brother-in-laws with each
other, a circumstance, which is very comfortable for the client. You only have
to ask the first dealer you find, whether he hasn’t something more interesting
than the weathered chunks and if he don’t find something adequate under his
table, he will drag you through all the halls to his cousin, who has the finest
achondrites under his table. Why they don’t put the interesting meteorites on
top of the table? – I don’t know. But once asked they’ll show you gladly their
treasures. I remember the best Bensour I saw in my life: Somewhat larger,
regmaglypted, 95% absolutely fresh crust (not glossy), fine flow lines – the
dealers in web use this _expression_ in an inflationary way, but this was a real
“museum quality” specimen. I think it was Mr.Ismaily from Erfoud, who made me
the pleasure to take a glimpse on this beauty. (Dean, if it was this Bensour,
which you once sold on ebay – shame on you, why you were to lazy to wrap and
pack it well for the transport? You destroyed it!).
Another prejudice, I read in the meteorite magazine, is
that the experts of the meteoritic scene call those cheap unclassified stones
despicable“desert crap”. Hmm one of my clients found last year a nice stone at
an morrocain dealer. After classsification he got the result: Highly
unequilibrated L3, W1. From another collector I know, that last winter he picked
out from those crap a stone, which, I don’t know what this means, they call now
“ureilite”. Indeed such finds are a real exception, but at those
prices it’s for sure not wrong to buy a nice paper-weight from
space. |
