[meteorite-list] Self Proclaimed Pairings Issues (SPPI)/Personal Thoughts

[almitt]

Greetings to all,

There is another unfortunate side effect to the way specimens were 
collected in the NWA region. To me (an this is only my opinion) there 
has been a misrepresentation of true total weights by the finders along 
with dealers buying material. It is my understanding that often when 
material was collected at a NWA site, that it is/was kept separate and 
the "found" material represented a certain weight for that find. A 
dealer might buy a portion of that material say for example a 800 gram 
stone and leave the remaining say for example 4,200 grams for other 
buyers. The dealer of the 800 gram stone cuts the material and sends it 
off to be classified and given a number. After the specimen is then 
acknowledged with a class and given a number the dealer then offers this 
stone for sale with a total weight of 800 grams.

The crime in this (per my example) is there is an additional 4,200 grams 
that were part of that fall. Buyers thinking they are buying what is 
only 800 grams of material are really being sold a number with a total 
weight 800 that matches 5 kilos of material, and making their material 6 
times more common. One only has to look at the bulletins to see the 
large variety of various classes and high number of "rare" classes 
found. Obviously some of these are unique falls and possibly different 
material. HOWEVER, there are a great number of specimens that are paired 
(whether we know it or not and whether they are ever properly paired or 
not). If this doesn't show anything else, it should show the importance 
of proper collecting procedures so material can be properly cataloged 
and known. It is one reason why I haven't bought as many NWA specimens 
as I would like.

While I am glad that there is new and unique material available for all 
of us, there is a lot of problems on the way items were collected, total 
weights and some dealers not informing buyers of possible paired 
material from the source they bought from.
Sadly in the end this is about money, controlling the market and making 
you competition look bad. I think if dealers had worked together that 
the whole NWA fiasco might have yielded a better understanding of the 
true amount of falls and unique material from that region.

(disclaimer) I'm not suggesting any of the debaters on this subject  are 
guilty of what I have mentioned, rather it is a statement of one of the 
problems that I see with the collecting of NWA specimens and how they 
are collected, purchased and so on. Maybe some of the guilty will chime 
in to defend their bad practices. All my best to the rest!

--AL Mitterling


Adam Hupe wrote:

The weight is recorded under a particular number so using nomenclature that
applies to an official or provisional meteorite to describe another will
only serve to make these weight entries inaccurate.