[meteorite-list] More on the Lorton... or Lorton hears a Who ?
cdtucson at cox.net
cdtucson at cox.net
Fri Jan 29 09:30:20 EST 2010
Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.
John Lennon
--
Carl or Debbie Esparza
Meteoritemax
---- Jeff Grossman <jgrossman at usgs.gov> wrote:
> I have a problem with collectors who think a museum is "hording" when it
> acquires a specimen for its collection. There is no intrinsic right of
> the public to be able to own buy and trade in every meteorite that is
> found. The public is well-served by museums like the Smithsonian, which
> use interesting objects like this for research and educational purposes,
> while curating them for posterity.
>
> The flip side of this is that in the US, there is no intrinsic right of
> government institutions to confiscate legally owned meteorites. This is
> also good. Clearly, the Smithsonian is attempting no such thing.
>
> As long as we're talking about ownership, I was at the site of the fall
> on Jan 21. At this time, the roofers were still on site, having just
> finished patching the roof. The only other visitors who had arrived by
> this time were several of my colleagues from the Smithsonian, members of
> the local media (TV news) and one well-known collector/dealer who had
> flown in from the western US on a red-eye. The collector, in front of
> me and the media, convinced the roofers both to give him the damaged
> roofing shingles with the hole, and then to go back up to the roof and
> retrieve for him the piece of plywood with the hole in it, from under
> the new shingles. I've been wondering since then, who legally owns
> these artifacts? The roofers had almost certainly been asked to fix the
> damage and cart away the debris (but obviously, I didn't see their
> contract). Did they, at this point, own the debris? What if there was
> a fragment of the meteorite embedded in the debris? (I don't think there
> was, but there could well be dust.) Who would own that?
>
> Jeff
>
> On 2010-01-29 2:25 AM, Richard Kowalski wrote:
> > I've been informed privately that it was apparently the Smithsonian that contacted the owner of the land and offering payment.
> >
> > I didn't mean to slight any hunter or dealer by my suggestion that one contacted the land owner...
> >
> > I'm a firm believer that sufficient samples need to be submitted for classification and research but I have a huge problem with some researchers that feel they need to horde every milligram for no reason other than to keep it out of the collector market.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Richard Kowalski
> > http://fullmoonphotography.net
> > IMCA #1081
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ______________________________________________
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> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Dr. Jeffrey N. Grossman phone: (703) 648-6184
> US Geological Survey fax: (703) 648-6383
> 954 National Center
> Reston, VA 20192, USA
>
>
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