Hello list, for years several friends in the world of meteorites have been forwarding
the "cat fights" to me. Without being present on the list I can still remember the
good ole' days of Michael Casper fame and this guy who came out of nowhere after
buying Ray Meyer's collection for a start-up meteorite business, built his business
into something that inspired many to get on-line with Space Rocks and then disappeared
into obscurity and the world of coins from where he came, as did David Bowers and Ray
Meyers and several other collectors. Over the years I've watched a lot of changes, no
matter how tough, they have all been good. I can remember when there were only 6
meteorite dealers on the planet. I can remember 15 years of begging Berbers to keep an
eye out for rocks from the sky on their trips back to Algeria and Mauritania and Libya
on camel trails to get more fossils to sell at the markets in Morocco. Little did I
know that that Zagora in the 1980's or that first 138 kilos of El Hammami Mountains
laid out in front of me in the desert in November of 1997, would turn into this
wonderful flood of amazing material for all of us to share and enjoy. Little did I
know that the first e-mail I received from Dr. Candace Kohl at my office in 1992 on my
new IBM 486 computer would turn into this e-market we have today (back then only
government employees and institutions even had email). I remember Glenn and Margaret
Huss helping me build my slide collection for the meteorite lectures that I did three
times a day, three days a week, every week, forty eight shows a year for 12 years from
Seattle to San Diego to Tulsa Oklahoma, Salt Lake City, Denver, Tucson and El Paso. It
was a hard grind but somebody had to get out there and build my customer base and
nobody else was going to do it for me. Besides, I just couldn't see stepping on the
toes of those few dealers that were making their livings by putting an advertisement
in Sky and Telescope magazine, etc. Good guys have left us, in the science and in the
hobby, hopefully good people are following in their foot steps. But with the great
change has come an amazing opportunity for all of us to benefit from this time in
living history. We have the chance to collect and preserve a mass of educational
material for people now and a thousand years from now to enjoy, share, study, lust
after and learn from. For all of us this science and hobby is for the fun and pleasure
of learning and observing. Collecting these rocks from space and studying them is a
dream come true for all of us, a tactile experience of passion for the mind and the
soul.
Years ago, a book dealer who used to display in Tucson said, "are all meteorite
dealers pirates?". He was fondly joking about the way we would all cheat lie and fight
for the first chance at his books on meteorites and tektites. I thought about it for a
minute and said "yes, I guess we are, we sail about looking for the next bounty and we
all try to beat the other guy to the next treasure, there is no market structure, just
sell as you can when and where you can. We lust after these stones as if they were
gold and jewels" And he said " yeah and that's not to say anything about all those
knives in the back!". We both laughed at the truth of it.
So when my most prolific message forwarding friend lost his job and consequently lost
his Internet access to the list, I found myself missing all of the fun, all the cat
fights! A wise and wonderful motivational speaker Steve Chandler who used to be a
sports writer in Tucson has many times said in his books and lectures " Don't get mad,
get better". So in the name of fun and science and for the benefit of collectors,
students, scientists, teachers, curators and public and private collections everywhere
and for all time, keep up the good work everyone. Keep talking and fighting and
arguing and laughing and hunting and lusting for more meteorites. Keep looking for the
next treasure out there, keep spending your dollars and keep making trades, keep
innovating new ways to beat the other guy to the bounty. We will all come and go, for
all of us the end of the trail is the same. But these collections that we are building
will go on. These specimens are out of the weather and into the hands of curators both
amateur and professional. But someday we are all gone and most of these rocks will
eventually end up in the hands of science and museums. So all that we do now, good or
bad, ends up as good, as long as the specimens never disappear and as long as every
specimen is well documented and labeled. John Wasson once said to Ruben and Warren and
I, "What about the student a thousand years from now?". Think about that people, what
we do now effects people a hundred years from now and a thousand years from now. There
is a finite amount of material out there. We are in a blossom of historic discovery
right now, we are living history that will fill the books of tomorrow. It is safe to
estimate that a thousand years from now all of this planet's meteorites will have been
picked up. The bulk of those will be found in our lifetimes. We have a responsibility
of stewardship for these treasures and part of that responsibility is to preserve a
large portion of these specimens for posterity.
I am on the list now and am really enjoying all of it. Some of these new guys have
made real innovative niches for themselves, it's very impressive. And there are more
new guys to come. As we all promote this hobby business/science we create more
competition. We also create more public interest and more public awareness. Some young
student is going to study meteorite science at a university just because of all the
raised awareness in Park forest last year. I'll bet that right now there is a student
somewhere buried in classes and homework studying meteoritics because he or she saw
the Peekskill car that Al Lang and Ray Meyers hauled around the planet years ago. How
many of us met Harvey Ninninger as kids traveling through Arizona on a family Summer
road trip to the Grand Canyon or Meteor Crater and got bit by the meteorite bug so bad
that it never went away.
I'll tell you, I never dreamed of these times ten or fifteen years ago. Just try to
imagine what the world of meteorites will be in ten or fifteen more years. Let's try
to get along, for the sake of those who are watching. But, if you need to fight in
public then this is probably the best venue, where everybody can witness the details
and sort out the truth. I for one am enjoying all aspects of this list. From the
kindest to the meanest, from the most informed to the neophyte. No matter which way
this list goes it will end up for the common good. A list like this will always be a
reflection of real life. It is something to do with the difference between living life
and writing it down for someone else to read.
Here to stay and enjoy, Edwin Thompson (E.T.)
E.T.METEORITES
LAKE OSWEGO,OR
www.edwinthompson.net
reach me: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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