Hello,
Just a quick and funny side note. When Mike Farmer and I were making
those first trips to Morocco, I remember on trip #1 going to a house
where we were told a "New" iron meteorite was located. When we got
there the owner brought out the "new" iron for us to see and purchase.
Mike and I looked at it and then each other, it took us about 42
seconds to see that it was an NANTAN! No doubt what so ever. I was
thinking wow, even over here with thousands upon thousands of desert
meteorites at their feet, they are still trying to pull a fast one!
Go figure.
Best Wishes
Michael Cottingham
On Jul 28, 2009, at 9:20 AM, John Gwilliam wrote:
Several years ago, when the NWAs started showing up in large
amounts, there were several people on this list (including myself)
who were concerned about "false finds" being submitted as new
meteorites. It doesn't take dishonest people too long to figure out
that a common meteorite purchased at a show can be planted in some
new location where a new find would bring a lot of money.
I don't know how this can be prevented or avoided, but it's pretty
obvious that dealing with people you know very well is a step in the
right direction.
Just four days after Jack Schrader announced his first finds of the
latest Arizona fall, I got a phone call from a guy in Southern
Arizona who claimed he had a new Arizona meteorite he had found
three and a half years ago and he was going to sell it at auction.
He wasn't clear about what kind of auction he intended to use, but I
got the idea he was going to offer it to whoever offered him the
highest "bid" over the phone.
I get so many calls like this I was going to tell the man I wasn't
interested but decided to ask him a few questions. His answers were
typical and somewhat amusing. The find location was somewhere in
Southern Arizona, but he wouldn't narrow it down any more than that.
He claimed the first test he had done was a fire assay. Hmmmm, seems
like a weird test for a meteorite. Next, when asked what the
classification was, he said it was an anomalous achondrite with 28%
nickel. He had sliced the nearly 2 kilo stone and had a ~750 gram
slice that was full of metal veins. To get the metal to show up
better he had etched the slice with pure nitric acid. as I asked
more questions, his answers got more evasive.
Sure hope I didn't miss out on a good deal, but my common sense told
me to take a pass.
There's nothing to prevent someone from offering an inexpensive NWA
meteorite as a new find. As long as they stick to their story it's
near impossible to prove them wrong. It has happened to me a few
times so I'm guessing it has happened to other List members as
well. Is there a solution to this? I guess only time will tell.
Best from sunny Arizona where we're expecting 115F today,
John Gwilliam
At 07:16 AM 7/28/2009, Martin Altmann wrote:
Hello list,
because I couldn't find it mentioned yet on the list here.
In the last German meteorite, a "find" made in 2004 in Saxonia by a
moldavites hunter,
typical weathering feautures of hot desert meteorites were found.
So it was a fake.
Hopefully Königsbrück will be soon removed from the Meteorite
Bulletin
Database?
Unfortunately I still find there another skeleton in the cupboard
of German
meteorites listed as an official meteorite.
Inningen, Bavaria, 1998.
The Ni-content and the trace element data are consistent with
Sikhote-Alin
and the piece is a typical shrapnel.
(That's why no structural type had could been determined).
>From impact dynamics we all know, that shrapnels are produced only
by
impacts of major iron masses.
Inningen was a single 1.2kg specimen, "found" on a road.
It's highest time after 10 years now, I'd say, to remove Inningen
from the
Catalogue or at least to mark it as doubtful.
(That becomes more and more a fashion to fake finds. A while ago
someone in
Germany claimed to have found a Gibeon in a quarry - and 2 weeks
ago a
German tried me to sell a meteorite he had found here by his own - an
indochinite!)
Best!
Martin
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John Gwilliam
Too many people were born on third base
and go through life thinking they hit a triple.
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