[meteorite-list] Michael's meteorite market trends

[Martin Altmann]

Hi Michael,

your suppositions are right, first of all it's the greed for the best
bargain or sometimes to get a missing piece into the collection.
To buy from totally unknown offerers is a behaviour, which developped from
ebay-trade, where the sellers are anonymous and the buyer will come to know
the identity of the seller after the purchase is fixed.

One point you forgot - a large part of the collectors are rookies, who came
in the very recent 1-3 years to meteorite collecting - classically via ebay.
They simply don't know (yet), who is a good dealer and who stood out in past
with bad standards. I guess 70% from "my collectors" never have heard of a
Casper nor of a Illinois-Steve neither of the Italian Stallion.

Another problem is, if newbies start to sell by their own on ebay, which is
legitimate - remember ebay started as a marketplace for collectors -
to refinanciate their expensive, new hobby or to earn some extra bucks.
Often they have not yet the knowledge and the experience and on their part
they may buy not authentic stuff from ebay too for resale, what they will
take for real. Let say for e.g. if someone cut off a dirty corner of granite
from a curbstone and sells it to them as a nakhlite, they can't judge yet
and will resale it as nakhlite.
This I would call rather naive than fraudulent.

At least with IMCA was made an approach to improve the situation - if more
and more of that kind of green sellers will join there,
the chances will get better to avoid such sales of nonauthentic stuff.
No screams for ebay police, free world ect. please, one should contact those
sellers in private and politely, not a priori insinuating that they try to
cheat and in most cases, according to my experiences, they gladly will
accept the help and advice, because of course they care about their own
reputation, especially if they plan to continue selling.

Martin