[meteorite-list] Yes, I am home. Tucson Observation

[MeteorHntr at aol.com]

Hello List,

In reply to Anne's post,  where she stated:

"One of the Show organizers even told me that  this "has to be the busiest 
room in the whole Show!!!"

I want to confirm  that not only did Anne and Geoff's room have a lot of foot 
traffic (some of  which even resulted in some sales) it seemed this year's 
show was good, if not  very good, for many of the other meteorite dealers in 
attendance.  It was  hard to find any meteorite dealer who was complaining.  In 
comparison,  attendance in general at the Inn Suites seemed off by at least 50% 
from earlier  years maybe even more.  There were even available parking 
spaces on the  weekends, every time I needed to park.  Not surprisingly, most all 
of the  other non-meteorite dealers that I talked with indicated this was a bad 
show for  them, many of which closed up early and headed out before the show 
was  over.  (I think the gold nugget sellers probably are the other exception  
that had a good year).

It is encouraging that it seems that Meteorites  are somewhat bucking the 
downward trend the rest of the economy seems to be  experiencing right now. 

While some of the established meteorite  collectors are buying less now than 
in previous years, it seems that the new  collectors coming into the market 
are picking up most of that slack.   

Of course it would be nice if the economy was booming for everyone else  too, 
as that would only help more so with meteorite sales.  It will be  
interesting to see next year at Tucson, how many dealers of other items do not  return 
to Tucson, and also to see how many new meteorite dealers may take their  
place.  We might see a lot of dealers of other items add a few meteorites  to their 
inventory just so they can put up a "Meteorites Inside" sign outside of  
their show room next year to boost both traffic and sales!

The attendance  of our Meteor Mayhem Birthday Bash was about the same as last 
year, as it seemed  was the case with the Auction.  And so that is a good 
sign that the  meteorite collectors were out in force in spite of the economic 
storms.  

Speaking of the auction, without specific numbers to back me up, it  seemed 
that the items under a few hundred dollars did quite well, and the higher  
priced items, like in previous years, went for bargain prices.  The big  
difference it seemed was that there were fewer big ticket items in the auction  this 
year.  I am sure Michael Blood will have a more thorough review of  this in his 
upcoming issue of Meteorite Trends. 

While it is against the  S.E.C. and F.T.C. laws to represent (or even 
mention) meteorites as  "investments" rather than "collectibles," it will be very 
interesting to see if  the value of these wonderful "collectibles" will continue 
to swim up-stream  against the economic current.  Heck, if they would just 
hold their  commercial values, I would be very happy!

One dealer told me that there  is a significant number of people in Europe 
that are divesting themselves of  paper money and stocks, and are looking to buy 
anything physical to put their  money into. I guess there are some people 
that think that inflation might be  coming and that owning physical things that 
could go up in value (at least at  the same rate of inflation) could be smart 
thing to do.  Small and valuable  antiquities seem to be a favorite of world 
wide buyers, and meteorites seem to  be gaining in popularity too.

I have always said that the only reason  there are not 100,000 meteorite 
collectors is because not enough people have  been exposed to the hobby yet.  We 
only need a tiny fraction of 1% of the  people exposed to how cool meteorites 
are to collect, and we should see the  numbers of our ranks rise significantly 
over time.

Events like the  Canadian fall being reported, with Canadian officials going 
on record saying  that the government might pay $30 per gram for anything 
found, only helps to  fuel interest.  

And whether there are actually MORE meteorite falls  in the last few months, 
or just that newspapers now know that meteorite stories  attract readers, so 
more fireball reports now all of a sudden qualify as "news,"  in either case, 
the extra exposure only helps. 

When was the last time a  fireball made it into the New York Times?

As a hunter/dealer, I like  these trends.

I guess only time will tell how it all pans out.  But  it seems that this 
year's Tucson Show is a great sign of what might be coming in  our future.

Steve #1




In a message dated 2/18/2009  3:03:48 P.M. Central Standard Time, 
Impactika at aol.com writes:
Hello  everybody,

Yes, I made it home yesterday late afternoon.
My car is now  unloaded, and I am going thru a few hundreds emails I really 
did not have  time to read during the Show. If you are trying to get hold of 
me, 
please be  patient for another day or two, and I will get right back to you.  
 
(please no phone calls just right now; somehow I managed to catch a  
head-cold 
and lose my voice somewhere between Tucson and  Denver.)

Thank you to all of you who dropped by room 230 in the  InnSuites, it was 
great seeing all of you even if the conversations  sometimes had to be a bit 
short. 
One of the Show organizers even told me  that this "has to be the busiest 
room 
in the whole Show!!!"

Again,  thanks everybody. And if you didn't make it to Tucson this year, the 
next  one is less than a year away!

Anne M.  Black
http://www.impactika.com/
IMPACTIKA at aol.com
Vice-President,  I.M.C.A. Inc.
http://www.imca.cc/  

**************A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy 
steps! 
(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1218822736x1201267884/aol?redir=http:%2F%2Fwww.freecreditreport.com%2Fpm%2Fdefault.aspx%3Fsc%3D668072%26hmpgID
%3D62%26bcd%3DfebemailfooterNO62)