[meteorite-list] NWA 869

[Phil Whitmer]

I love NWA 869!  It's my absolute favorite, hands down! It's ubiquitous, 
there's so much of it to love. Back in the day, when most of you kids were 
knee high to a grasshopper, I knew a fellow that imported over a metric ton 
of it.  Sent it back in 55 gallon drums from Morocco in a ship container. 
This was at the start of the Sahara rush, when you could get it for 1/20 of 
a shekel a gram. 1/10 of a dirham in Moroccan money if you bought it in 
volume.  The first thing you did was dump out a barrel into a big pile and 
dive in like a kid into a heap of Autumn leaves. Then you would spread the 
pile out and cherry pick it, there would always be some rare stuff in there. 
Angrites, carbonaceous chondrites, howardites, eucrites, diogenites, you 
name it, the Moroccan dealers were not so discerning back then, they were 
just learning their trade. Then you would go for the unclassified OC's, the 
really fresh looking fully crusted ones. Some real beauts could be found. 
The funny thing about 869 is that the really big ones, the boulders, are 
smoothly crusted, more often black than  brown. The very small ones too have 
a smooth black crust.  All the rest can be put into a big pile, no one would 
mistake them for anything other than 869.  It's mostly the color, but the 
texture too.  No other meteorite has that bluish color that sometimes looks 
grey green depending on the light. Sometimes it has a violet tinge, like Liz 
Taylor's eyes.  All the midsize rocks had the same distinctive color and 
bumpy, knobby texture. This type was the vast majority of what was and 
probably still is sold as NWA 869. The other stuff was probably just mixed 
in by mistake, probably by a guy with a scoop shovel, scooping meteorites 
off the desert floor and into a cart pulled by donkeys.
The real fun started when you cut it open. You wouldn't believe all the 
different things you could find in there! If you sliced enough of it up, you 
would see all kinds of unique inclusions, strange crystals you would see 
only once and then never again. Tons of fun to look at it under the 
microscope. Sometimes fragmental brecciated, sometimes highly shocked, you 
never know what you'll see. Lowbrow or not, 869 has been made into more 
jewelry, spheres and assorted knick knacks than any other meteorite I know 
of. Thousands of people wear it next to their skin, some of them never take 
off their meteorite amulet stones set in rings and necklesses. Definitely my 
favorite stone meteorite.
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Phil Whitmer