[meteorite-list] AD: Special - The Hard Nut from the Dark Planet & Back to the Roots

[Martin Altmann]

Dear collectors,

On our weekly trip we'll take you back to our origins this time and as a
special, we will guide you to a strange place too.

The first stone, which we want to introduce today, belongs to that type of
meteorites, which for many collectors expresses the essence of their hobby.
An unequilibrated Type-3 chondrite.
While the chondrules-lovers enjoy to jaunt through the grand gardens of
chondrules with the unaided eye or with low magnification, discovering time
and again different and new ones, even the most blunted veteran collector
sits sometimes back and is moved by a shiver, making himself aware to have
on his desk a piece of the very primary matter, wherein lie all beginnings
of all solid matter in our solar systems.
Type-3 chondrites match closest that material, which formed the
planetesimals, which in turn formed the planets.
They are relicts from the beginnings, never heated to an extent, that they
lost their important characteristics. They are the keys for understanding as
they transport the information about the circumstances at the origin of our
solar systems. In type-3 chondrites the chondrules aren't that intergrown
with the matrix as in the meteorites of higher petrological grades, nor are
they chemically equalized. The formation of chondrules - not yet fully
understood - is one of the most important questions of modern planetology.

>From our practice we experienced that type-3 chondrites are best to change a
mineral collector into a meteorite collector.
Once aware, that the 3ers are the ur-stuff, wherefrom ALL the mineral
specimen in the collections diversified - including as well as the
collectors themselves! - he will totally fall for those fascinating objects
of outer space.
It is a remarkable deficiency: in each mineralogical compendium, in each
course of studies in mineralogy at the universities must stand on the very
beginning such an unequilibrated chondrite!

Here you are. NWA 4900 as an L3 displays the whole variety of chondrules in
all sizes and in a high density.
The slices we priced at 9$/g.

http://www.chladnis-heirs.com/special-nwa4900.html


Second part is about our ureilite NWA 4896:

Ureilites are loved by collectors for being the most uncommon achondrites
falling from the sky and hated by dealers for bristling against abandoning
their innermost. Cut and polished they radiate with their iridescent
blackish grains and fields an aura of a mysterious elegance. Ureilites
contain a lot of carbon in various modifications from graphite up to
hexagonal and cubic diamonds,
much more metal than any other achondrites (forming together with the carbon
a lot of cohenite). And they are simply the hardest rocks in our solar
system. It was Novo-Urei wherein 120 years ago, the first extraterrestrial
diamonds were recovered.
At least as hard as to crack the stones themselves it is to crack the riddle
of their formation in modelling a parent body for that strange matter, to
explain the complex processes and history which led from a source material,
which must have resembled in several aspects some of the carbonaceous
chondrites, to that black beauties we display in our showcases.
It is a recurrent topic in mediocre SciFi-movies, that the hero is sentenced
by a totalitarian regime to be sent to a place, where noone ever escaped, to
escape, in most cases an icy planet. Obviously the writers aren't meteorite
collectors, else they would send their protagonists in the mines of the
ureilite parent body, a world of black and superhard rock.

With our NWA 4896 we proof to be not so heroic and won't torture ourselves
in trying to mess with this cross-grained belle to slice it up, because it
is a classical, extremely hard representative of its type. In a spacial
Golden ratio we removed the deposit & classification specimen and decided to
make a collector happy in him/her adding a main mass and exemplary showpiece
of this fascinating type to the collection.
Our recreancy is advantageous for the collector, as we will let the stone go
at a price, which doesn't justice the material:
10$ per gram.

http://www.chladnis-heirs.com/special-nwa4896.html


Best Regards,
Stefan Ralew & Martin Altmann

Chladni's Heirs
Munich - Berlin
Fine Meteorites for Science & Collectors