[meteorite-list] By Popular Demand................

[tracy latimer]

It doesn't happen often, but it does.  When KemKem (remember the thread about 2 months ago?) first became available, buyers were assured it was going to be catalogued 'real soon'.  Then it came out that what was being sold as KemKem was a jumble of several finds mixed together, and that most likely the original dealers who made the trip to Morocco had been sold a bill of goods.  KemKem is now mainly a meteoric curiosity, and not worth as much as it might have been if it were a single new documented find.

I know I have bought one purported Canadian meteorite that, when it arrived, turned out to be a piece of slag; I kept it as a cautionary reminder.  I probably have a couple other meteorites that aren't all they are cracked up to be, but since I mainly collect micros, determining that definitively is nearly impossible.  After seeing how difficult provenance can be to confirm, I keep as much of my documentation as possible; if I don't have a specimen card or bill of sale from the seller, I print out the auction or page offering.  As a collector, your main defenses are 'know your dealer', and 'document, document, document!'

Tracy Latimer

> From: altmann at meteorite-martin.de
> To: Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
> Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:13:30 +0200
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] By Popular Demand................
>
> I don't know, I haven't found my calmative pills yet...
> For me it's like stepping in a parallel hypothetical universe.
>
> Could we please to try to quantify,
> how often that happened, that someone was burnt, in buying a meteorite,
> which was declared to be a different more historic locales?
>
> Then we would see more clearly, if there does exist that problem at all,
> or whether it is of speculative character only.
>


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