[meteorite-list] AD: NEW meteorite coin, NWA 869 metal coin for sale.

[Sterling K. Webb]

Hi, All,

    I do not say this in any way to criticize the
manufacture, sale, nor trade in this item, nor
the seller nor buyers of it, but this is a member
of a very clear-cut class of items.

    An NWA 869 Meteorite Coin is a Collectable.
So is any meteorite "coin" or your box of beloved 
Babylon 5 Commemorative Plates or a Souvenir 
Spoon from the 1939 New York World's Fair or 
a ceramic Wall Plaque of Old Faithful or a Baseball 
Card or a Beanie Baby or all Olympic Pins or 
Star Trek Memorabillia or Action Figures...

    A Collectable (or Collectible, take your pick;
nobody seems to know which is right) is an Object
specifically made To Be Collected. It is almost 
always in the form of a common object combined 
with an often irrelevant point of interest for whose 
sake it is Collected.

    One could as well have made and sell a Meteorite 
Zippo lighter or set of Meteorite Trading Cards or a 
Meteorite Music Box or any of the many hundreds
of different things that could have a meteorite mounted 
in or on it or not have an actual meteorite at all, like a
Series of Commemorative Plates of historic observed 
falls (Ensisheim, Wold Cottage, L'Aigle... right up to 
Holbrook and Sikhote-Alin).

    Is it a Coin, a Metal, a Token, a Beanie Baby?

    No. It's a Collectable.


Sterling K. Webb