....an interview with Dr. Alan Rubin for Meteorite Magazine a few years back, and while I was in his office he kindly shared a number of prize specimens with me, among them a sizeable piece of Rose City.
In glancing back at that article again, I was reminded that Dr. Rubin specifically mentioned Rose City within the interview itself. I had asked about the scientific community's resentment of the dealing/collecting community, and his response included the following:
"Some meteorites which are coarse-grained breccias, like Portales Valley, like Rose City, like Blithfield, which is an EL6 enstatite chondrite, will have clasts that are several centimeters in size, and if you cut it up smaller than that, you lose this petrographic information".
Without wishing to bring up the original scientist-collector-dealer debate again, this comment suggests that this particular ebay specimen is surely NOT just a large, light-colored Rose City clast, as was earlier suggested. The specimen is well over two inches wide, clearly too big to be a clast.
I believe the seller concerned has had many specimens on ebay before, and he/she never seemed to be one of those novice or larcenous sellers we all moan and groan about. I wonder if this one isn't just an honest mistake, somewhere along the line. I know I recently attached the wrong picture to an ebay auction and it can be virtually impossible to correct!
Gregory
