Adam wrote:

"I see Shirokovsky as being off topic"

I agree and would keep my mouth shut iof I thought it were an innocent scam that was over and reparations made.

Since I agree with Adam as such this will be my only post, since what is on topic, interestingly, is clarifying that it is not a *meteorwrong*.. - a meteorwrong by most definitions is natural material than can be confused with an authentic meteorite out in the field. This is not that case, this is the case of the apple colored moldavites faked on eBay. This is a *PSEUDOMETEORITE* and that term is doing it a favor, and we should IMO all be very clear about that for the mutual benefit of all of our collections and future material that could enter them.

Shirokovsky may elicit the Pavlovian Dogs salivation in collectors that haven't been soiled by it. You know - save that salivation for the real stuff, Shirokovsky isn't even in the category of a blow-up meteorite doll. There is nothing technologically interesting about Shirokovsky, the matrix is nothing better than you can find in a cheap faux bead shop, and why people think it would have an etch pattern is beyond me. The only reason to have it is because when you drive by an accident on the highway and see an accident with blood and guts, you have to stop and cause everyone else a traffic jam as you gawk. And then you have to tell everyone else, yes, look I have a piece of that corpse on the road, look at me!

I wouldn't feel this way at all if the story were all closed and those who have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars (yes, the amount is correct) were ok and the crooks in jail. But the collective memory seems to mean nothing even if we can learn from our past. Everything would be cool in the collectible category if there were a fixed amount of Shirokovsky out there.

It is not all accounted for and it gives someone else the idea of manufacturing other meteorites; why, instead of getting locked up for stealing from several collectors and causing all kinds of business heartache beyond the active imagination of many listmembers, the message is clear. Make a Shitpkovsky fake, if you get caught, be nowhere to be found and burn the people who trusted you, cause a great deal of pollutuion that everyone else has to clean up (the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez, and we all cleaned it up), and then appear 10 years later selling more of it like war memorabilia from the dark side and getting people to actually argue it is a good thing to have in collections.

Huuumpt. I still remember being at a function 3 years ago where the big meteorite dealer insisted to an ignorant crowd that his many Shirokovsky pseudometeorites. He sold them for $25/g and many just three years ago painted me as someone who didn't know since he was the expert (ha).

Here's what the serious problem is: the material was all controlled before by the dealer terrorists and collector rapists. If you bought a piece of this suckerite from one of the original good faith dealers, you did a fine thing to help bail them out and had the cute thing to discuss it in a charitable show and tell. But - Now assigning a collection value to new material all you are doing is having money chase the masses that were never cut. And as we all know, when money chases, money gets. And - guess where this new material is coming from?

Kindest wishes
Doug


-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Hupe <[email protected]>
To: Adam <[email protected]>
Sent: Fri, Aug 19, 2011 5:38 pm
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Shirokovsky


I guess collecting artifacts has made me leery about fakes. Get caught with one fake artifact and it will put your entire collection in question.  It is best to get artifacts papered and destroy any that have been "killed" by an independent authenticator. I see Shirokovsky as being off topic since it is not a meteorite and is was only produced in order to defraud honest collectors out of their hard
earned money. 

If you want a piece of a recycled old Ford motor block in your collection, that is your business.  To me, it is garbage and so are the people who produced it!

Adam








----- Original Message -----
From: Bernd V. Pauli <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Cc:
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 1:50 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Shirokovsky

Hello All,

Shirokovsky is terrestrial, it is a pseudo-meteorite, it is man-made!

- does not contain typical accessory phases of stony-iron meteorites
- accessory phases completely atypical
- Olivine has a terrestrial oxygen isotopic composition
- Pt/Ir ratio similar to that of terrestrial Cu-Ni ore deposits
- has never been in space (noble gases no cosmic component!)
- absence of cosmic-ray tracks corroborates noble gas study results (=
bestätigen)
- Olivine TL spectra similar to terrestrial peridotites

Conclusion: Shirokovsky is manufactured, man-made!

As for its nickel contents, see also the entry in the (online) Met.Bull.

... and, yes, I have a thin 2.7 gr slice of Shirokovsky with translucent
olivines.
I got that pseudo-pallasite in 2003 from Eric Olson. It doesn't pollute my collection but it sure looks a bit "pale-faced" when sitting next to a genuine
pallasite like Esquel, Brenham, Admire, etc.

Cheers,

Bernd


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